Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Vitamin Shoppe Inc. priced a 9.1 million share initial public offering at $17 each, above the high end of its forecast range, as the retailer of nutritional supplements joined the busiest period for U.S. listings in almost two years.

The North Bergen, New Jersey-based company, along with Blackstone Group LP and the family of founder Jeffrey Horowitz, raised about $155 million, according to Bloomberg data. The IPO price values Vitamin Shoppe at about $470 million and its stock will begin trading tomorrow on the New York Stock Exchange, a decade after the retailer’s online unit sold shares at the peak of the Internet bubble. Vitamin Shoppe sought $14 to $16 a share for its IPO, an Oct. 21 filing showed.

“This is the kind of business that may prove to be recession resistant,” said Dan Veru, who helps oversee $2.9 billion at Palisade Capital Management in Fort Lee, New Jersey. “I do expect IPO activity to pick up as the appetite for risk continues to improve.”

The offering is the 17th U.S. company IPO since the start of September, the most over a two-month period since December 2007 to January 2008, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Initial share sales evaporated in the fourth quarter of last year after New York-based Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for the world’s largest bankruptcy and spurred a credit-market freeze.

Internet Bubble

The listing is Vitamin Shoppe’s second foray into the IPO market, after the initial share sale of its online unit, VitaminShoppe.com, in October 1999 lost more than 90 percent for investors in less than two years as dot-com stocks collapsed.

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch & Co. investment banking unit, Barclays Plc in London and New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. were the lead underwriters for the sale.

Vitamin Shoppe is the first retail-chain store IPO since Toano, Virginia-based Lumber Liquidators Inc., which sells hardwood flooring, offered shares in November 2007. Vitamin Shoppe originally filed in May 2007, before the start of the credit crisis. It withdrew its registration statement in February this year before resubmitting its IPO filing in July.

The vitamin retailer sold 7.67 million shares, while New York-based Blackstone, the world’s largest private-equity firm, and the Horowitz family offered a combined 1.43 million shares, according to planned offer amounts in its regulatory filing.

Preferred Stock

After the IPO, the company will be 55 percent controlled by Irving Place Capital, the former Bear Stearns Cos. buyout fund that oversees $4.4 billion, the filing showed. The New York- based private-equity firm didn’t offer any shares in the sale.

Vitamin Shoppe intended to use its portion of the IPO proceeds to redeem about $64 million in preferred stock held by its owners and repay about $40 million in debt, according to the regulatory filing. The company had about $165 million long-term debt prior to the offering.

Remaining funds will be used to pay expenses related to the IPO, including a $750,000 management fee to Irving Place, according to the filing.

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Tsang in New York at mtsang1@bloomberg.net; Rita Nazareth in New York at rnazareth@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 27, 2009 19:01 EDT