US Foods Holding Corp. has raised $1.02 billion in the year’s second largest initial public offering to date, after MGM Growth Properties LLC’s $1.2 billion float last month, reports Reuters.

The sale price of $23 per share came in toward the top of the price range set by the food distributor owned by Clayton Dubilier & Rice LLC and KKR & Co., and sets a value on the company at slightly over $5 billion, according to Fox Business.

After the payment of a large dividend, paying down debt and raising revenue, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and KKR & Co. have doubled their investment according to familiar sources, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The buyout firms acquired US Foods from the Dutch supermarket chain, Ahold NV in a 2007 deal valued at $7.1 billion.

A $3.5 billion acquisition of US Foods by Sysco Corp. was abandoned in response to being blocked by anti-trust regulators early last year. The controversial $3.5 billion merger deal, which was announced in December 2013, would have combined the only two companies in the country able to offer and fulfill nationwide contracts to deliver foods to restaurants, hospitals and hotels. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claimed that the merger would have eliminated competition within the market, and would have created higher prices for customers that would need to order all food and supplies from a single distributor. This led the commission to file a lawsuit to block the merging of the two companies.

Since the shelving of the deal, US Foods agreed to acquire Dierks Waukesha – a supplier of fresh produce and vegetables to restaurants, caterers, schools, and institutions across Northern Illinois, Upper Michigan, and Eastern Minnesota with annual sales topping $120 million.

Then in February of this year, US Foods announced it agreed to acquire the assets of Cara Dona Provision Co. – a wholesale distributor of food and food-related products across the New England region of the U.S., and most recently announced its acquisition of fruit and vegetable processor and distributor, Freshway Foods for an undisclosed sum.

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Lynda Kiernan