By Pat Savage

Endeavor Group has ended its initial public offering.

The reason, reportedly, is that it would have cost Ari Emanuel and his partner close to half a billion dollars.

The California-based firm, which owns the William Morris Endeavor talent agency, slammed on the brakes the day before it was to have begun trading. According to reports, the stock would have begun trading at just $20 per share.

“A New York Stock Exchange listing at $20 would have given Endeavor — which also owns half of the Ultimate Fighting Championship — a market cap of just $4.9 billion. But Emanuel did not believe the company’s worth has fallen since it was valued at $8 billion in a 2017 funding round that fetched $32 a share, sources said,” reported the New York Post. “He made it clear the IPO was undervaluing the company,” a source said of Emanuel, who inspired the Ari Gold character on HBO’s “Entourage” TV show.”

“Of course,” the Post continued, “an IPO at $20 a share would have also taken a pretty penny out of Emanuel’s pocket. The Endeavor CEO — together with executive chairman Patrick Whitesell— owns 39.6 million Endeavor shares. At $20 a share, that stake would be worth just $792 million — or $475 million less than in the 2017 fundraising round.”

The SEC filing said, “Based on an assumed initial public offering price of $27.00 per share (the highpoint of the estimated public offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus), we estimate that the net proceeds from this offering will be $361.6 million (or $419.3 million if the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares in full), after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us.”

“The company, Hollywood’s biggest talent agency owner, was hoping to raise more than $600 million. It’s the latest black eye for the IPO market, as investors see companies as overpriced. Peloton Interactive had a disappointing debut earlier Thursday, following the disappointing debuts of Lyft and Uber earlier this year and the WeWork cataclysm of the past month,” reported cnbc.com. “The difficult market environment for such high profile IPOs was seen as a negative for the broader market. Endeavor scaled back its offering in a Security and Exchange Commission filing Thursday, saying that it expected to debut the price of its shares between $26 to $29, which is below the $30 to $32 range it estimated last week.”