Viking Holdings Ltd filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after filing confidentially in February. The cruise operator is working with Bank of America (BAC), J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM), UBS Group (UBS), Wells Fargo (WFC), HSBC (HSBC), and Morgan Stanley (MS) on the offering which will be listed on the NYSE under the ticker VIK.
The IPO is expected to raise $500M or more, though the actual details of the number of shares and size of the offering were not disclosed in Friday’s filing.
The company also disclosed that in 2023 it reported a loss of $1.85B on $4.7B in revenue as cruise operating expenses increased by 33% to $2.85B. Adjusted EBITDA loss widened to $1.09B from $367M in 2022 and the adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 35.5% from 18.4% the year prior.
Started in 1997 with just 4 river cruise ships, the company has expanded to 84 ships in operation with 650K passengers in 2023.
Related names in the sector are mixed at midday. Carnival Corporation (CCL), the largest cruise operator, ended fiscal 2023 with $21.6B in revenue. Carnival shares are down 0.2% at midday.
Royal Caribbean (RCL) reported total revenue of $13.9B with a fleet of 65 ships. Shares are higher by 0.5%.
The smallest of the “Big 3”, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH) generated $8.5B in revenue with 32 ships in operation. NCLH is fractionally lower.
Cruise line operator Viking Holdings files for IPO
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