Dex Media, Inc. | Initial Public Offering of Stock in 2004
Initial Public Offering of Stock in 2004
In June 2004 Dex Media announced its intention to offer 53 million shares of stock to the public, including 15.3 million primary shares from the company and 37.8 million shares from The Carlyle Group and Welsh, Carson; the stock offering involved approximately 35 percent of the ownership interest. The company intended to offer shares at $23 to $26 each, but slow market trading prompted the company to lower the price to $19 per share immediately before the initial public offering (IPO), completed on July 24. Dex actually sold 19.7 million primary shares and applied net proceeds of the IPO, at $352.5 million, to pay debt and to redeem $127.7 million in preferred stock from its equity partners, leaving the company with only one class of stock.
Dex continued to pursue its primary areas of growth, bilingual publications and online access to dexonline.com. A distribution agreement, effective August 1st, with InfoSpace, Inc., provided access to dexonline to six million users of Switchboard.com. Infospace's success in generating traffic to the Switchboard site prompted Dex to make the agreement. In the Denver area Dex introduced two community directories with a Spanish-language yellow pages section, for the Northglenn-Thornton-Commerce City area and the Central-Downtown Denver area. Mango-colored pages differentiated the Spanish-language section, while the tab, "En Espanol," marked its beginning. The section included a 24-page directory providing emergency contacts and information on government agencies, educational institutions, and business assistance organizations.