Shares of Ollie’s Bargain Outlet (OLLI) started trading on NASDAQ Thursday with a huge 30% jump in its first day of trading. Having priced its 8.9 million shares $16 per share, which was already $1 above the original IPO range of $13 to $15, shares of OLLI went as high as $22.99 in midmorning trading, Thursday. TheStreet’s Ruben Ramirez spoke with the Mark Butler, CEO of Ollie’s Bargain Outlet at the NASDAQ exchange just after the company went public. On being asked what Ollie’s is going to be doing with the $143 million raised, Butler responded that the company was going to ‘continue and grow the store chain.’ Ollie’s calls itself a ‘fast-growing extreme value retailer.’ Butler said that Ollie’s ‘buys merchandise of all descriptions and some beyond description’ and then it gives customers a ‘thirty day no-hard-time guarantee’ on their purchases. ‘We buy name brand closeouts direct from the manufacturer, bring it back to our stores, put stickers on it, and sell it direct to the consumer,’ Butler said. As to the term ‘fast growing,’ as written on the company’s prospectus, Butler reiterated the sentiment saying that Ollie’s ‘growth model is one of the most attractive things we have in our future.’ Ollie’s currently has 186 stores in sixteen different states but Butler says that the company will ‘contiguously continue to grow and expand,’ adding that the company’s growth has been in the mid-teens in the past eleven of years.
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