Retail

Investors More Than Just Hungry for Habit IPO

Habit Restaurants Inc. (NASDAQ: HABT) entered the market Thursday morning in its initial public offering (IPO). The 5 million share offering original priced at $18 apiece, but they went on to actually enter the market 67% higher at $30. Based on the filing data, this was a very fast IPO from filing to trading.

The Habit Burger Grill is a fast-casual restaurant concept that specializes in made-to-order burgers and sandwiches. It operates in the approximately $34.5 billion fast-casual restaurant segment, which the company believes has created significant recent disruption in the restaurant industry and is rapidly gaining market share from adjacent restaurant segments, resulting in significant growth opportunities for restaurant concepts such as Habit.

Habit has grown from 26 locations across three markets in California at the end of December 2009 to 98 locations across 10 markets in four states in late August. The company has a compound annual growth rate or 34.5% from 2009 to 2013.

These restaurants have generated 42 consecutive fiscal quarters of positive comparable restaurant sales growth, due primarily to increases in customer traffic. From fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2013, revenue increased to $120.4 million from $28.1 million. In the same time, net income increased from $0.1 million to $5.7 million.

The underwriters for the offering are Piper Jaffray, Baird, Wells Fargo, Stephens, Raymond James and Stifel. An overallotment option of 750,000 shares has been offered to the underwriters.

Shares were up about 94% to $34.90 from its pricing in the first two hours of trading, with as many as 5 million shares moving in that time. The IPO range on the day so far was $30.00 to $36.00.

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