NEW YORK (Dow Jones/AP) — Citadel Broadcasting Corp., which owns radio stations, returned as a public company Friday and its shares closed 9 percent higher than the initial public offering price.
Shares of Citadel closed at $20.65 Friday on the New York Stock Exchange, up $1.65 from the IPO price of $19 each for 22 million shares.
The IPO pricing was at the high end of price talk of $17 to $19 a share. That pricing was led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Credit Suisse Group's Credit Suisse First Boston.
The company, which is based in Las Vegas, bills itself as the sixth-largest radio-station operator in the United States. It owns 144 FM and 63 AM stations in 24 states, mostly in mid-sized markets.
Citadel, which was founded in 1991, was a public company until June 2001, when buyout firm Forstmann Little & Co. took it private in a $2 billion deal.
Forstmann Little will continue to own about 80 percent of the stock after the IPO.
Since Forstmann Little took control of Citadel, it has replaced most of its management. Lawrence Wilson, the company's chairman and chief executive, left in April 2002, replaced by Farid Suleman, former president and CEO of Infinity Broadcasting. Infinity is a unit of Viacom Inc., the New York-based entertainment giant.
As a result of its buyout, and its strategy of growing by aggressively buying radio stations, Citadel has a significant debt load. As of March 31, it had about $1.01 billion in debt. The company plans to use proceeds from the IPO to pay down debt.