Aritzia Inc. (TSX:ATZ) chairman Brian Hill is using a bought deal to sell shares in the company he founded 41 years ago.
CIBC Capital Markets has agreed to buy 950,000 subordinate voting shares of the fashion retailer at a price of $69.85 each from Hill and "certain entities owned and/or controlled, directly or indirectly, by him or him and his immediate family," Aritzia said in a notice released after markets closed Tuesday.
The transaction translates into $66,357,500 for Hill, who maintains a 17.3-per-cent stake in the company. That stake would be worth roughly $1.37 billion.
His plan is to use the cash "for estate planning, investment diversification and charitable giving purposes," Aritzia said.
Hill's family charitable foundation is the ARON Charitable Foundation, which has donated to organizations such as Big Sisters of BC Lower Mainland. Hill and wife Andrea Hill have also promised $5 million to the Vancouver Art Gallery redevelopment, which has stalled as executives seek to redesign the proposed building because of rising costs.
Aritzia shares Wednesday morning traded at one point down nearly four per cent, at $69.20. Even at that price, which was the low for the day so far, the company's shares were up about 29.5 per cent from the close at the end of 2024: $53.44
Hill has done this before.
In November 2022, BIV reported about how Hill was also selling about $70 million worth of his holdings in Aritzia to CIBC Capital Markets in a bought deal.
Aritzia's share price similarly had a bad day after that 2022 transaction was announced, which drew comments from another extremely successful Vancouver-based fashion retail entrepreneur.
“The minute you indicate you're going to sell, the value of your stock drops because people are going ‘Why is the owner selling?’” Lululemon Athletica Inc. (Nasdaq:LULU) founder Chip Wilson told BIV after Hill’s 2022 share-sale announcement.
“'Oh my God! Everyone else should sell because the owner is selling.' That's one of the most bullshit lines ever.”
Wilson said that he was encouraged to sell Lululemon shares to diversify his assets when he owned more than one-quarter of the company.
Hill founded Aritzia in 1984 with a store in Vancouver's Oakridge Centre and then later opened another on Robson Street in 1986.
It has grown to have more than 125 stores across North America. That includes 10 new stores that opened so far in 2025.The company plans to open a further 12 new stores this calendar year, it said in January.
Its most recent earnings report, released in January, said that profit was up 72 per cent in its most recent quarter.
