Bob’s Discount Furniture is looking to go public, saying it has the momentum to more than double its store count to 500 locations during the next decade.
The Manchester, Connecticut-based retailer, owned by private equity firm Bain Capital, filed a registration form for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. The chain said it had not determined how many shares it planned to sell or what the expected price will be. The stock would trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker name BOBS.
In its SEC filing, Bob’s reported it has been thriving while its peers in the retail sector struggle. It said it can vastly expand its current brick-and-mortar footprint of 206 stores across 20 states and is targeting having 500 by 2035.
Sales for the U.S. furniture industry soared during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, as Americans confined to work from home bought new furnishings to make their dwellings as comfortable as possible. But that high point for furniture retailers was followed by a tsunami of challenges and drop in sales. Shoppers had already acquired what they needed; high inflation was cutting into discretionary spending; high interest put a damper on home buying; and finally, tariffs made it much more costly to import furniture from some nations, such as China.
Several furniture sellers filed for Chapter 11 protection after COVID, most recently Columbus, Ohio-based American Signature Furniture in November. In its filing, American Signature blamed its dive in sales volume to the severe housing market decline, heightened cost pressures from rising inflation and interest rates, the new tariffs and a post-pandemic slowdown in demand for furniture. This month, the chain said it will close dozens of stores and may have to liquidate.
Thriving despite challenges
In contrast, Bob’s believes “there remains significant opportunity to expand our store base in both existing markets and new geographies. Our growth strategy is fueled by significant and proven white-space potential. ... Our growth is guided by a disciplined playbook that informs what markets to enter and how to enter them.”
According to the chain, it focuses its “expansion on areas with strong furniture demand, particularly where there are existing furniture stores, to optimize capture of qualified customers in the market.”
The furniture industry’s pandemic tailwind “resulted in market-wide pull forward, which led to a subsequent slowdown in the industry in the following years that was further exacerbated by increased interest rates and inflation,” Bob's said.
“Bob’s has emerged stronger following this cycle and continues to show resilience and outperformance compared to the home furnishings industry,” according to the chain.
Rising sales, profits
In fiscal year 2024, Bob’s said, its sales growth surpassed the home furnishings industry and that it planned to build on that momentum.
The retailer said it posted net income of $80.7 million on $1.72 billion in revenue for the nine months ended Sept. 28 last year, up from $49.3 million in net income on $1.43 billion in revenue for that period in 2024.
As for tariffs, Bob’s said it has moved production out of China and that its primary sourcing markets are now Vietnam and the United States, with smaller sourcing markets in Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia.
With interest rates and inflation normalizing, “housing turnover and new residential construction are expected to accelerate, creating a favorable demand backdrop,” Bob’s said in its filing, adding that it has “proven its ability to outperform industry benchmarks even through recent headwinds, underscoring the durability of our model and positioning us to capture incremental upside as conditions improve.”
Bob’s was founded in 1991, and Boston-based Bain acquired it in 2014.
For the record
J.P. Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley, RBC Capital Markets and UBS Securities are acting as joint book-running managers for the proposed offering. BofA Securities, Evercore Group and Goldman Sachs & Co. are also acting as bookrunners. Baird, KeyBanc Capital Markets and Raymond James & Associates are acting as co-managers.