IPO Plans Iced at Yeti

Apparently the high-end cooler market didn’t say as hot for as long as some had hoped. Yeti Holdings has ended its plans to go public, citing “market conditions.”

Yeti filed to go public in July 2016. It was planning to seek a valuation of around $5 billion in its IPO, which was expected to happen as soon as September 2016. But within months, Yeti started weighing alternatives to a public offering, including raising private funding. Even in 2016, when growth had been skyrocketing, a $5 billion valuation was seen as aggressive by some investors.

In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission dated Friday, Yeti said it is no longer pursuing an initial public offering. The letter didn’t provide additional details about the market conditions it was referencing.

“The data was long out of date,” David Schnadig, managing partner at Cortec Group, Yeti’s private-equity backer, told the Wall Street Journal. “It was simply a cleanup measure by Yeti.”

He declined to comment on the company’s future plans.

During the past several quarter, Igloo Products Corp., Coleman Co. and others have introduced new coolers with features similar to Yeti’s at lower prices.