I don't mean to sound impatient, but the talks about a Utah Cabela's store has been circulating for a long time. Then finally someone says that Cabela's is going to make an announcement during the last week of March and nothing has been announced. Any new info?
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Sounds like another spin of the rumor mill.
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I GUESS WE JUST WAIT AND SEE I HAVE MY FINGER CROSSED
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Cabela's seeks SEC's approval to sell stock
March 24, 2004
FREE PRESS STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES
The owner of one of Michigan's largest single tourist destinations is planning an initial public stock offering to raise an estimated $230 million.
Sidney, Neb.-based Cabela's Inc., a 43-year-old outdoors, hunting and fishing retailer, filed a prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday to sell its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
The company plans to use proceeds from the stock sale to repay debt and grow from nine stores to 12 by 2005. It didn't give a price range.
The Cabela's store in Dundee off U.S.-23 opened with great fanfare in 2000 and is the second-largest store in the chain, at 228,000 square feet of space. More than 6 million people visit it every year and it's attracted several spinoff developments at the intersection of U.S.-23 and M-50.
The store features a two-story fabricated mountain and waterfall and a stocked fish pond. There's a fishing department with 5,000 rods on display, a boat store, a recreation vehicle and trailer service shop, enormous amounts of outdoor clothing, a furniture shop that has a living room suite done in traditional hunter red plaid, a huge archery department and a gun shop with more than 600 long guns in the everyday department and high-end antiques and collectibles in the gun library.
"Their equipment for waterfowl hunting is unsurpassed," said customer Charles Malinchak of Haycock Township in Bucks County, Pa.
Malinchak, who went to Cabela's Hamburg, Pa., store earlier this year, was equally impressed with the company's catalog business. His order of 75 goose decoys was delivered in four days.
Through retail stores and catalogs, Cabela's sells about 235,000 products.
Sales have grown 16 percent annually over the past five years and rose to $1.4 billion in fiscal 2003. Sales per store averaged $43 million last year; sales at stores open at least 12 months grew 2.4 percent, the filing said.
Operating income grew 18 percent annually, to $84.9 million over the five years, Cabela's said.
Started in 1961 as a mail order company, Cabela's opened its first store in Kearney, Neb., in 1987 and operates locations that range from 35,000 square feet to 250,000 square feet. There are two stores in Nebraska, two in Minnesota, and one each in South Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas and Pennsylvania. A 10th store is set to open later this year in Wheeling, W.Va.
Company spokesman Joe Arterburn said he could not discuss the IPO until the SEC has accepted it. The timing and size of the planned sale were not
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