The only Bay Area-based airline, Virgin America, said in an updated financial filing that it plans to raise more than $368 million when it becomes a publicly traded company likely sometime in the first half of 2015.
The Burlingame-based airline, a high-tech, customer-focused airline offering perks such as live TV and sleek leather seats, will sell at least 13.34 million shares at a proposed price of $21-$24 per shire. If shares sell at the midpoint of that price range, the company would be valued at $972 million.
The updated estimated earnings is about three times the $115 million Virgin said it expected to raised when it filed for an IPO in July, but is in line with recent analysts estimates. At $368.1 million, Virgin would be the second-largest IPO from California this year, following GoPro s $491 million IPO in June.
Virgin America, part of the Virgin Group that was founded by businessman Sir Richard Branson — who also owns Virgin Galactic, whose spaceship crashed into the Mojave Desert on Friday and killed on pilot — wants the cash to grow its small, 53-plane fleet and expand service in Dallas, New York and other markets. Virgin operates out of San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Virgin joins the bottleneck of companies that put off an IPO to wait out the world record-breaking IPO from Alibaba in September, which consumed most investors attention, and the wild stock market gyrations this fall. Virgin is one of at least 92 companies waiting to go public possibly later this year, but more likely in 2015.
Virgin became profitable last year, netting more than $10.5 million, according to financial filings. In the first three months of this year, profits topped $57.3 million, up from a $4 million loss at the same time last year. Its revenue increased about 6.9 percent to $1.4 billion from 2012 to 2013.
