Sportsman’s Warehouse to sell gear here, stock to public

Sportsman’s Warehouse, which opens a Carson City store to the public in about two weeks, will become a public retail chain soon to raise $201 million via an initial public offering.

The Midvale, Utah, outdoor outfitter has about 50 stores, mostly in Western states, and is part of the Seidler Equity Partners’ portfolio of companies. It filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public, but specifics are still pending.

In Carson City on Monday, the final touches were being put on the Sportsman’s Warehouse sign going up on the Stewart Street side at the mall. The Carson Street sign went up earlier.

Katy Gay, store manager, was on hand with some staff working toward the outlet’s soft opening two weeks from Monday and the grand opening on Saturday, April 5. The 40,000-square-foot space inside looked cavernous because merchandise still wasn’t there.

Gay said vendors from various gear and clothing companies will be represented at the grand opening. She also said barbecue would be served on grand-opening day. Gay, who grew up in Carson City, has been with the outfitter chain for years, working at the Reno outlet, and will oversee operations of the anchor tenant in the mall at 1227 S. Carson St.

The other new major tenant, Bealls family apparel store, is set to have its grand opening April 24. Bealls is part of the Texas-based Stage Stores Inc., which already is publicly traded under the symbol SSI. It closed Monday at $25.17, up 59 cents and 2.4 percent.

For the Sportsman’s Warehouse initial public offering (IPO) of stock shares, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs will handle some investment banking details. No IPO date or terms of pricing for the stock shares, however, were yet public knowledge.

The outfitter, founded in 1986, last calendar year had revenues of nearly $527 million, according to Yahoo Finance. Yahoo’s data also included one-year revenue growth of almost 40 percent and listed the retailer’s employment cadre at 3,000 in the firm’s growing number of outfitter outlets.

Seidler, a closely held management investment firm, provided capital and other help in getting Sportsman’s Warehouse through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, the recession that began late in the last decade and the subsequent recovery period. Sporstman’s Warehouse currently is joined in the Seidler portfolio by 10 other firms, some privately held corporations and others limited-liability companies.