Vitamin Shoppe Soars: IPO Watch

NORTH BERGEN, N.J. (TheStreet) -- Vitamin Shoppe is soaring in its first day of trading as its IPO raised more than expected.

Shares are up 10.8% to $18.84, after trading as high as $20.29 earlier this morning.

Vitamin Shoppe raked in $154.6 million from its initial public offering, as it priced 9.1 million shares at $17 each. This was above the expected range of $14 to $16 a share.

The company offered 7,666,667 shares of common stock and selling stockholders are offering the remaining 1,429,410 shares in the offering. The underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,364,411 shares from the selling stockholders.

Net proceeds will come in at about $121.2 million for Vitamin Shoppe. who will use it to redeem about $72.5 million of preferred stock held by its shareholders, mainly private equity firm Irving Capital Place.

The company is trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "VSI."

Vitamin Shoppe sells vitamins, minerals, nutritional supplements, herbs, sports nutrition formulas, homeopathic remedies, green living products and health and beauty aids. It stands to compete with drugstores like Rite Aid(RAD), Walgreen(WAG) and CVS Caremark(CVS), which also sell some of these products.

-- Reported by Jeanine Poggi in New York

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