Caesars gets us$ 1.13 billion market value on IPO pricing

The stock, which was offered for us$ 8 to us$ 10 apiece, will start trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market today under the symbol CZR.

Caesars pared its offering after an aborted attempt at a us$ 531 million IPO in 2010. Going public paves the way for the potential sale of additional shares by backers including investors in the company’s 2008 takeover, the biggest-ever of a U.S. casino operator. Those shares, worth more than us$ 300 million at the current price, may subsequently weigh on the stock.

“They weren’t going to be able to get anything done unless they did an unbelievably small offering,” said Chad Mollman, an equity analyst at Morningstar Inc. in Chicago. “There’s a huge overhang on the stock” because fewer than 2 percent of the company’s shares are available for trading after the IPO, Mollman said.

Existing Caesars investors may sell 34.7 million shares after the offering, according to the IPO prospectus. The IPO gives firms such as Paulson & Co., the hedge fund run by billionaire John Paulson, a chance to exit and potentially return cash to investors.

Rights to Sell
Paulson & Co., which owns 9.9 percent, has the right to sell 12.4 million shares. Shareholders including Goldman Sachs Group and Deutsche Bank AG have the right to sell 22.3 million shares, worth us$ 201 million at the offering price. Apollo and TPG didn’t plan to sell shares in the IPO and aren’t among the funds that have registered for additional sales.

Caesars pulled a registration filing to sell as much as us$ 500 million in shares following the IPO, a person with knowledge of the matter said this week. An amended filing for the offering on February 6 didn’t mention the us$ 500 million registration.

Credit Suisse Group AG and Citigroup Inc. led the IPO. The company plans to use proceeds for general purposes including development projects, possible acquisitions and maintenance expenses.

Buyout Boom
CEO Gary Loveman led Caesars during its takeover, which was announced in 2006 in the midst of a record buyout boom. About us$ 1.6 trillion in leveraged buyouts were completed from 2005 to 2007, according to Preqin, a London- based research firm. Caesars, then known as Harrah’s Entertainment, traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol HET until 2008.

Apollo, TPG and firms that co-invested in the buyout were poised to own about 70 percent of Caesars common stock after the IPO, the filing showed.

The IPO price gives Caesars an enterprise value of us$ 22.5 billion, or 11.8 times adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of us$ 1.92 billion, excluding costs such as one-time acquisition expenses, the filing shows. That compares with a valuation of 14.6 times Ebitda in the failed 2010 IPO that sought to raise more than 30 times the size of this offering.

While Caesars has slashed costs since the buyout, sales were little changed at us$ 6.7 billion in the nine months ended September 30, and the company still doesn’t have casino operations in Macau, the world’s largest gambling market, where Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts get the bulk of their sales.

‘Aggressive’ Valuation
That may weigh on the company’s valuation, Chris Snow, a senior analyst at New York research firm CreditSights, said before the pricing.“The long-term debate about whether they deserve the multiple is valid” because Caesars doesn’t have casino operations in Macau, said Snow. The valuation is “pretty aggressive.”

Caesars gets more than 90 percent of its sales from the U.S., with more than 50 properties across the country. Revenue in Las Vegas, Caesars’ biggest market, rose 6.5 percent in the nine months through September as sales in Atlantic City and other smaller U.S. markets sank. By comparison, total gambling revenue in Macau surged 42 percent for all of 2011.

On a non-adjusted basis, Caesars’ enterprise value is 12.5 times Ebitda, little changed from 2010, when the company sought a valuation of 12.4 times pretax earnings, and more than Wynn, which traded at 10.5 times Ebitda as of Feb. 3. Las Vegas Sands traded at 15.8 times Ebitda.

U.S. economy
Caesars stands to benefit as the U.S. economy improves, said Dennis Farrell, a casino-debt analyst with Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina. American gross domestic product grew at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the final quarter of 2011, the fastest pace since the second quarter of 2010.

“If you really believe the U.S. economy is really going to improve, the company has removed a lot of costs from their capital structure and their operations,” Farrell said.

MGM Resorts International, a rival of Caesars that also operates mainly in the U.S., traded at about 19 times 12-month Ebitda as of February 3. In contrast, Wyomissing, Pennsylvania-based Penn National Gaming had an enterprise value of about us$ 5 billion, or 7 times trailing 12-month Ebitda, Bloomberg data show.