Smithfield Foods raises $522M in first day on Nasdaq

Smithfield Foods officials rang the opening bell Tuesday at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, as the packaged meat and fresh pork giant launched its initial public offering of 26 million stock shares at $20 per share on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, raising $522 million.

The offering consists of 13,043,479 shares of common stock owned by the company and 13,043,479 shares of common stock sold by Smithfield’s existing shareholder. The price of $20 per share is below the $23 to $27 range stated last week, which would have raised as much as $939.6 million.

According to Smithfield’s announcement of the starting price late Monday, the underwriters of the offering have been granted a 30-day option to purchase from the selling shareholder up to 3,913,042 additional shares of the company’s common stock at the initial offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions.

“This marks a historic milestone for our company,” Smithfield President and CEO Shane Smith said in a speech before ringing the bell, noting that it had been more than a decade since the company was publicly traded. Smithfield has been owned by China’s WH Group since 2013, and the combined company went public in Hong Kong in 2014.

Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities and Goldman Sachs are acting as joint lead book-running managers for the proposed offering. 

The company filed an IPO registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month, after WH Group announced last year that it planned to take Smithfield public.

The largest pork producer in the United States, Smithfield Foods has about 34,000 employees nationwide. In December 2024, the company signed a deal with VisionAg, an affiliate of North Carolina’s HD3 Farms, to start a new hog production business in early 2025 in Cary, North Carolina. Smithfield will purchase a 9% minority interest in the business for $450,000 in cash, the SEC document submitted Jan. 6 says.

In September 2024, Smithfield’s European operations were carved into an independent subsidiary now known as Morliny Foods, part of a streamlining effort before going public.

Smithfield Foods also said it would transfer some of its hog farming operations to a venture controlled by Murphy Family Ventures in North Carolina, Bloomberg reported earlier in December. According to the SEC filing, Smithfield paid Murphy $3 million in cash in exchange for a 25% minority interest in the enterprise, which will supply approximately 3.2 million hogs to Smithfield annually.

In December 2024, Smithfield sold its hog production assets in Utah for $58 million, resulting in a gain of $32 million, and in November 2024, the company sold some of its Missouri hog farms for $32 million at a loss of $4 million, it said in the filing.