Global entertainment, sports and content company Endeavor is being taken public.
Owner Ari Emanuel says he is going to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “EDR,” according to registration documents filed publicly with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The goal for the company is to generate $100 million in the offering. According to the filing, as reported by cnbc.com, the company reported 2018 revenue of $3.6 billion. Net income was $231.3 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2018.
“Content is no longer defined solely by the traditional categories on which our businesses were founded,” the company said in its filing. “Television, movies and live events have been joined by others including podcasts, experiences, social media, multiplayer video games and e-sports. Wherever you are in the world and whatever way you define content, Endeavor is likely playing a role.”
CNBC reported that an IPO has been rumored “since Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell merged their talent agency with sports and modelling agency IMG in 2013. Since then, Endeavor has acquired the Ultimate Fighting Championship, professional bull riders, the Frieze Art Fair and marketing agency 160over90. Goldman Sachs will be the IPO’s lead banker along with KKR Capital Markets, the capital markets arm of the investment firm that helped Endeavor purchase UFC for more than $4 billion in 2016, according to the registration documents. J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank are also listed.”
The release of Endeavor’s IPO details was, according to Variety, “frustrating to some rival agency leaders, who fear it will be used by the WGA as ammo in the wrangling with ATA. In reality, the date of the disclosure was established some time ago, as Endeavor set in motion with the SEC its long-gestating plan to go public. The company could have postponed the filing until the WGA impasse had been resolved — as noted by competitors worried about the WGA dynamics — although that might have had a domino effect of delaying the rest of the IPO process. Endeavor has not indicated a target date for the public offering.”
Emanuel, the brother of former White House Chief of Staff and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. Their father, Jerusalem-born Dr. Benjamin M. Emanuel, is a pediatrician who was active in the Irgun, a hardline Zionist militant group whose activities in Mandatory Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s led to its listing as a terrorist organization by the British authorities, the Jewish Agency and the 1946 Zionist Congress. Their mother, Marsha Emanuel, was a civil rights activist, and the one-time owner of a Chicago-area rock and roll club.
As a child, Ari was diagnosed as both hyperactive and dyslexic, and his mother spent many hours helping him to learn to read.
