Shareholders of Athene Holding Ltd., parent company of Athene USA, have raised $1.1 billion in their initial public offering of common stock, which began trading today on the New York Stock Exchange.

Athene’s class A common stock began trading this morning at $43.56 per share; the company had anticipated a price range of $38 to $42. The company on Thursday expanded the size of the IPO from the 23.75 million shares initially filed to 27 million.

“It’s like a promise kept,” said Grant Kvalheim, CEO of West Des Moines-based Athene USA, which Athene Holding acquired with its purchase of Aviva USA in October 2013. “We have said since the day we were founded that we wanted to be a publicly traded company.”

Athene did not receive any of the proceeds from the IPO, which will go to its private investors, Kvalheim said. And with more than $1 billion in excess capital right now, the company doesn’t have any immediate need for additional equity capital.

“Should we need it in the future, it gives us better access to capital than the private markets,” he said. “And regulators value the transparency and scrutiny in being a public company.”

In 2014, Athene Holding completed a private placement offering that raised more than $1 billion from third-party institutional investors as well as some of its existing investors.

Before the IPO, private equity firm Apollo Global Management, a major investor in Athene Holding, held a 9 percent direct ownership stake in the company, and it maintains that same ownership percentage post-IPO, Kvalheim said. Apollo controls 45 percent of the company’s voting shares. Apollo has agreed to hold its shares for at least the next two years, Kvalheim said.

“We certainly achieved new investors in the IPO, but many of the investors with us from the beginning have remained with us,” he said.  

Athene USA reported net income of $158 million in the third quarter of 2016, compared with $72 million in the prior-year period. The company’s year-to-date sales of annuities were $3.8 billion, up 100 percent versus the previous year-to-date period, the company said in a recent shareholder presentation. The company said its third-quarter annuity sales were a record $2 billion, up more than 250 percent over the previous year.

Kvalheim said the latest industry data from LIMRA indicates that Athene is now the largest seller of fixed indexed annuities through independent marketing organizations, based on third-quarter sales. The company currently employs about 1,100 people at its West Des Moines headquarters, after having added about 100 more employees in the past year.

Looking ahead, rising interest rates should benefit Athene and other annuity issuers by increasing sales volumes, Kvalheim said.