Fiber network company Zayo Group Holdings Inc filed with U.S. regulators on Wednesday to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering. The Boulder, Colorado-based company listed Morgan Stanley, Barclays and Goldman Sachs as lead underwriters for the IPO. (bit.ly/1qz17WH) Zayo, whose rivals include CenturyLink Inc (CTL.N) and Equinix Inc (EQIX.O), has a network covering about 300 countries, connecting the largest U.S. and European cities. The company's network connects 14,490 buildings, including 3,838 cellular towers and 527 data centers. Zayo is backed by private equity and venture capital firms including GTCR LLC, Oak Investment Partners, M/C Partners, Columbia Capital and Charlesbank Capital Partners. Zayo's regional and metropolitan fiber networks allow its customers, which include telecommunication carriers, to transport data, voice, video and internet traffic as well as to interconnect their networks. The company's revenue almost tripled to about $1 billion in 2013, but net loss widened to $137.2 million from $1.2 million a year earlier. Zayo had debt of about $3 billion as of March 31. Reuters reported in April that Zayo was exploring a public listing that could value the company at about $7 billion and that the company was speaking to investment banks. Zayo, founded by Level 3 Communications Inc (LVLT.N) former executives Dan Caruso and John Scarano, plans to use the proceeds from the offering for debt repayment and general corporate purposes. Zayo did not say in the filing how many shares will be sold in the offering or on which exchange the stock will be listed. The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.
