The luxury retailer Neiman Marcus has requested to withdraw its initial public offering.
The company, which filed for its flotation in August 2015, said in a statement Friday it had “determined that it is not in its best interests to proceed with the initial public offering.”
The private-equity firms TPG Capital and Warburg Pincus in 2013 sold Neiman Marcus to the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board and Ares Management.
The retailer in October 2015 said it would delay its offering until 2016 because of stock market “jitters.”
Then markets got even testier in the first quarter of 2016, which saw the fewest IPOs since 2009. While equity capital markets picked up in the second and third quarters, many private companies held off on going public for the year.
As Business Insider's Hayley Peterson reported in December, Neiman Marcus CEO Karen Katz attributed the retailer's pain to wealthy shoppers who've started comparing prices between retailers on everything they buy.
"There's no question that our core customer is visiting us a little less frequently," Katz told analysts on an earnings call at the time. "Customers in general are less loyal to any one retailer and I think a lot of that is because of the price transparency of online. I think that's here to stay. I don't think that's going to change."
Neiman Marcus in December reported its fifth straight quarter of declining sales at stores open at least a year. Its total sales dropped to $1.08 billion from $1.16 billion one year earlier, and net losses widened to $23.5 million from $10.5 million in the period.
