Fairway Seeks Premium to Supermarket Rivals in U.S. IPO

Fairway Group Holdings Corp., the grocery-store chain focused on greater New York, is seeking to go public at a valuation that’s more expensive than peers including Whole Foods Market Inc.

The IPO, scheduled to price today, would value the New York-based company at $453.6 million, or about 15 times adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the fiscal year ended April 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with 13 times Ebitda for Whole Foods and 5.2 times Ebitda for Safeway Inc., the second-largest U.S. supermarket chain. Fairway’s Ebitda was adjusted to exclude the costs of opening new stores.