Ignite Amends Initial IPO

Ignite Restaurant Group Inc., parent to the Joe's Crab Shack and Brick House Tavern+Tap casual-dining chains, this week amended its intended initial public offering and priced it at $12 to $14 a share.

Houston-based Ignite, which had filed its intent for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission last July, is seeking to raise as much as $75 million, down from its original $100 million target.

Ignite said it would offer 5.8 million shares on the Nasdaq exchange, and proceeds would be used to pay down debt and other purposes. At the $13 midpoint, Ignite would have a market value of about $322 million.

Read the full Ignite SEC filing

The company said it would use $1 million to pay a management-agreement termination fee to Connecticut-based J.H. Whitney Capital Partners, which bought Joe's Crab Shack in 2006 from Landry's Restaurants Inc. J.H. Whitney is selling 1 percent of its stake in Ignite and will control about 70 percent of shares after the offering.

The company said Credit Suisse, Baird and Piper Jaffray are bookrunners on this deal.

For the quarter ended March 26, Ignite in SEC documents said it had a profit of $2.5 million, up 108 percent from the prior-year period, and revenue of $103.4 million, an increase of 18 percent over last year's quarter.

Ignite has 138 restaurants in 31 states. Of those units, 122 are Joe's Crab Shacks and 16 are Brick House Tavern+Tap units, which the company developed in 2008.

Contact Ron Ruggless at ronald.ruggless@penton.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @RonRuggless