Brazilian-based lubricant supplier Moove last month submitted a confidential draft proposal for an initial public stock offering in the United States.
The documents submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are not public, and Moove’s parent company Cosan has not disclosed details of what it is considering. In a filing in Brazil, Cosan suggested that an offering could happen soon but also remained non-committal.
“The IPO is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions,” the company said in a July statement on its website.
Bloomberg reported that the company has retained four U.S. banks to work on the potential offering.
Headquartered in Sao Paulo, Moove produces and distributes lubricants under both its own Comma brand and ExxonMobil’s Mobil brand. The greatest portion of its sales are in Brazil and other parts of South America, but it also distributes in Europe, and in 2022 bought PetroChoice, then the largest lube distributor in the United States.
Officials said then that the company had expansion ambitions and that it entered the U.S. market as part of that strategy.
The SEC provides a process for initial IPO documents to be filed confidentially so that companies may avoid disclosing sensitive business information until close to the stock offering – or to avoid disclosure altogether should they opt not to proceed with the offering.