Freescale IPO within a fornight

Freescale, the private equity owned company, is expected to IPO within a fortnight to raise $1bn to pay down debt.

The offer of 43.5m shares on the NYSE as been priced at $22-24. The company says it is taking advantage of renewed investor interest in the chip sector.

When it was bought by Blackstone and other PE companies in 2006 for $17.6bn, Freescale had $9.4bn of debt loaded onto it requiring annual interest payments of $800m.

Freescale's sales in 2006 were $6.36 billion with EBITDA earnings of $1.63 billion.

In 2010, Freescale’s sales were $4.4bn for a $1.05bn loss. In Q1 2011, it reported a net loss of $3m on sales of $1.19bn.

Freescale has repaid some of the debt, but still has $7.62bn outstanding, on which it had to pay, last year, interest of $537m.

$764m worth of the debt matures next year.

 Blackstone is being sued in a class action for, allegedly, not revealing the full extent of its possible exposure to loss from its interest in Freescale when Blackstone filed for its own IPO in 2007.