Telecommunications infrastructure company CommScope aims to join the ranks of North Carolina companies completing an initial public offering of stock this year with an IPO of its own that could raise as much as $750 million.

While Hickory-based CommScope is catching a wave of improving market conditions that has carried a number of technology and life science companies to successful IPOs this year, CommScope is also riding growing industry demand for its offerings: equipment and infrastructure for wireless, enterprise and residential broadband networks. The telecom growth that characterized its origins – landline telephone lines initially, followed by cable television network deployments – is now a broader base of offerings supporting the growing use of all kinds of data by businesses and consumers.

“We participate in the large and growing global market for connectivity and essential communications infrastructure,” CommScope says in its filing. “ This market is being driven by the growth in bandwidth demand associated with the continued adoption of smartphones, tablets, machine-to-machine communication and the proliferation of data centers, Big Data, cloud-based services and streaming media content.”

IPO plans

CommScope filed its IPO plans with securities regulators late Friday. CommScope has not yet disclosed pricing terms for its proposed stock offering and the $750 million price – used to calculate the registration fee – is likely to change. CommScope gave no details on how many shares it will sell nor did it give a price range. As those details are hammered out in coming months, CommScope will update its filings with more information including details about how much it expects to raise.

The filing did say that CommScope is proposing the stock exchange symbol “COMM” but the company did not say on which exchange it expects to trade. J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank and BofA Merrill Lynch are joint bookrunners on the offering.

An IPO would would be the second for CommScope, which first went public in 1997 and traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Private equity firm the Carlyle Group acquired CommScope in a $3.9 billion deal disclosed in 2010 and closed in early 2011.

The company was founded in 1976 but its roots date to 1953 when Superior Cable Corporation was founded in Hickory to supply telephone cable. In 1967, Continental Telephone Company bought Superior Cable and formed CommScope as a division under the new company Superior Continental Corporation. A group of Hickory-area investors led by Frank Drendel bought the CommScope division in 1976.

The following decades saw the company grow and diversify in the United States and abroad with the changing telecommunications industry. Before the Carlyle acquisition, CommScope employed as many as 12,500, most of those workers located outside the United States. CommScope’s headcount remains the same, according to the most recent filing. But the company that Carlyle is taking public continued to evolve from the one that went private two years ago.

Growth via acquisitions

Before the Carlyle takeover, CommScope operated four reportable business segments: Antenna Cable and Cabinets Group (ACCG); Enterprise; Broadband; and Wireless Network Solutions. ACCG was the company’s biggest segment by revenue. CommScope now has three reportable segments: Wireless, Enterprise and Broadband. Much of what was the ACCG group is now in the Wireless segment.

While CommScope has built a global business supplying the equipment that connects the disparate parts of telecommunications networks, the company has also been making a push to build its presence within large corporations with acquisitions to build up its Enterprise segment. In March, CommScope spent $34.0 million cash to buy iTRACs Corporation, a company that develops and markets enterprise-class data center infrastructure management software. Also, the company last month acquired Redwood Systems, a provider of LED lighting solutions and integrated sensor networks for data centers and buildings. CommScope disclosed in the filing it paid $10.0 million for Redwood, a figure that could top $37 million if sales figures hit milestones.

CommScope has also built out its other segments with M&A moves. In 2011, the company acquired LiquidxStream Systems Inc. for approximately $41.5 million in cash. LiquidxStream provides solutions that allow cable operators to cost-effectively expand the bandwidth of their networks. LiquidxStream falls under CommScope’s Broadband segment. Later in 2011 CommScope acquired Argus Technologies for approximately $81.9 million in cash. Argus, which designs and sells base station antennas used by wireless operators, falls under CommScope’s Wireless segment.

CommScope turns profitable

Besides diversifying its offerings under Carlyle, CommScope has also turned the corner into profitability. In 2010, CommScope’s last year as public company before the Carlyle acquisition, the company topped $3.1 billion in annual revenue but lost $63.8 million. In 2012, CommScope earned $5.3 million in net income on $3.3 billion in net sales, according to the latest filing. The 2012 results followed a $392.3 million loss in 2011.

In the first six months of 2013, CommScope reported $1.7 billion in revenue, up 10.5 percent over the same six month period in 2012. Profit in the first six months ending June 30 was $17.0 million. In the first six months of 2012, CommScope lost $11.3 million.

A CommScope IPO would offer Carlyle the opportunity to cash out on some of its investment in the firm. According to filings, Carlyle owns 98.4 percent of CommScope common stock. Proceeds from the yet to be determined number shares that Carlyle sells will go to Carlyle. But CommScope also said that proceeds from the offering will be used to pay off some of its debt as well as for “general corporate purposes.”