00:00Sandwich chain Jersey Mike's is looking to raise as much as $1.09 billion in an IPO.
00:05It's just the latest consumer-oriented company to join the U.S. listing rebound.
00:10For more, let's bring in Bloomberg IPO reporter Bailey Lipschultz.
00:13Bailey, I mean, it's pretty cool to get a sandwich-based IPO after everyone was so excited about, like, AI.
00:19I'm like, cool, real-world stuff is coming to this market.
00:22It's crazy how quickly things shift, Danny, right?
00:24We were talking about record-setting debuts for SK Hynix, for SpaceX, everything around the AI infrastructure build-out.
00:30Had been kind of roaring, and now we're shifting as that fades away into the background, into some consumer names.
00:35So we do have the launch of Jersey Mike's.
00:37We are expecting potentially Cumberland Farms to launch its IPO process in the next day or so as well.
00:43So a pair of consumer companies looking to go public at a time where there's still very much uncertainty around
00:48the U.S. consumer.
00:49So then how is Jersey Mike's growth strategy compared with other fast food chains?
00:54Because you did mention that they don't have as much of an international footprint as, like, say, Subway,
00:58which is why maybe that's what I know.
01:01Jersey Mike's is very much or is only focused here in the U.S. and in Canada,
01:05but they brought back and partnered with the founder of the company to expand in the U.K.
01:10So that's been their big pitch from an international perspective is using their roots to build out the offering in
01:16the U.K.
01:16We were actually talking on our desk today about, like, okay, Danny, you spent some time living in the U
01:20.K.
01:20Does London really have a sandwich scene?
01:22California, where I'm from, doesn't have a deli scene.
01:24It does, but it's, like, Italian sandwich, you know what I mean?
01:27So Jersey Mike's isn't Italian as well?
01:29No, but they're, like, American Italian.
01:31It's absolutely different, Bailey.
01:32Do they have sad lunch?
01:34No, there are good ones, but they also do have sad lunch.
01:38Yeah, there's sad British food.
01:40On this, I mean, look, Blackstone has taken this and, like, run with it.
01:44There's so much marketing.
01:45They've had Danny DeVito almost not just being a spokesperson for Jersey Mike's, but for Blackstone, too.
01:50I think he was in their Christmas video, but they've only held this company for less than two years, right?
01:56I mean, that's a pretty quick turnaround to IPO it.
01:58It's a very quick turnaround, and that's kind of been the pitch.
02:00The funny thing is you go back to the acquisition, which closed in January of last year, was, okay, what's
02:05Blackstone's strategy?
02:06Because this is a company that, for all intents and purposes, could have IPO'd at the time, was the pitch
02:10from bankers.
02:11Now you bring in Blackstone.
02:12You bring in an experienced leadership team, the team that helped lead Wingstop not too long ago.
02:17So their pros, when I talk to folks on the buy side, they're excited about this company.
02:21The big question comes back to, how does the consumer stand up?
02:23Is the international expansion pitch going to come out to fruition?
02:27And then the big debate at the end of the day is, it's still a private equity asset.
02:30What does that overhang look like?
02:32I love Danny's point earlier that this is one of the few real-world IPOs,
02:37because most of the time we talk about, and you've broken a lot of news on SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
02:41Can you talk to us about the magnitude of this IPO, and maybe just investor sentiment?
02:47Like, is it so exciting when it's not related to AI or data center?
02:51It's funny, because a year or two ago, if you said there's a billion-dollar IPO, we all call it
02:55a blockbuster deal.
02:56Now we have 86 billion or 26.5 billion.
02:59This is still, again, with Blackstone selling, with some of the investors selling,
03:02targeting a one-point, call it $1 billion IPO, that is still scale.
03:06This is a company that the equity value, according to the filing, would be around $8 billion.
03:11That's a big company relative to the Cava, which is kind of the best comp that bullish investors like to
03:16use because of the growth story.
03:18It's still a big company.
03:19It's in an industry that, for all intents and purposes, could continue to grow.
03:23Not quite as sexy as AI, but there still is kind of a pitch to be made for it.
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