Cushman & Wakefield Going Public with Planned $719M IPO

Commercial real estate company Cushman & Wakefield is going public, offering up about 45 million shares. The company — which is based in Chicago but has a substantial presence in the Twin Cities — originally filed its intention to go public in early June, citing debt payoff as a core target for the proceeds.
 
Shares of Cushman & Wakefield will be sold on under the “CWK” symbol and are expected to become publically available Friday, August 3, according to IPOScoop.com.
 
Cushman & Wakefield plans to sell its shares for between $16 and $18 a piece, resulting in an expected total intake of about $719.3 million if shares are sold at the middle of their planned range.
 
Assuming the company hits its goal, more than half of the capital — approximately $470 million — will go toward reducing debt, particularly a Second Lien Loan, Cushman & Wakefield said. The company will then use about $130 million to finalize its acquisition of a small Washington D.C.-based real estate firm Cassidy Turley (which has operated under the name DTZ since another acquisition and subsequent merger in 2015).
 
Of the remaining proceeds from the public stock sales, $11.9 million will be used to terminate a management services agreement, and $107.4 million will go toward general corporate purposes.
 
In its fiscal 2017 year, Cushman & Wakefield generated $6.9 billion in revenue, compared to $6.2 billion the year prior. Through March this year, the company has recorded $1.8 billion in revenue, placing it on track to surpass last year’s mark.
 
As of December 31, Cushman & Wakefield reported having 48,000 employees worldwide.
 
Cushman & Wakefield’s IPO joins a rising tide of public offerings conducted this year. For the year so far, 105 IPOs have taken place, according to investment research firm Renaissance Capital, marking a 33 percent increase of the year prior during the same stretch of time.
 
Five of those IPOs have come from Minnesota companies: Bridgewater Bancshares, nVent Electric, Ceridian, ConvergeOne and Inspire Medical Systems. Two other companies based in the state, Securetech Inc. and Crosscode Inc., announced earlier this year that they intend to go public, but have yet to set an official filing date.
 
While IPO action is up nationwide, it’s also up in Minnesota year-over-year. In all of 2017, only three businesses filed IPOs: ASV Holdings Inc., Tactile Systems Technology Inc. and Calyxt Inc. Collectively, those three companies raised less than $93 million from their IPOs.
 
If Cushman & Wakefield achieves its targeted raise from the offering, it will be the best-funded IPO out of Minnesota in at least two years.