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Utah native David Neeleman is expected to take his latest airline venture, Azul S.A. of Brazil, public this week.
Azul is the fourth airline Neeleman has helped found after Morris Air, Westjet and JetBlue Airways. He established Azul in 2008 after leaving JetBlue.
The company's prospectus says the airline is the largest in Brazil in terms of daily departures and number of cities served — 784 departures serving 101 destinations.
The company hopes to raise $478 million in its initial public offering of 24 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange. The initial price range is expected to be $18.02 to $21.81. It also is going public in Brazil, selling 72 million shares in total.
Neeleman has tried several times to take the company public, but market conditions led to postponements.
Financial data provided on its U.S. prospectus show Azul had $2 billion in total revenue in 2016 with a net loss of $38.7 million in the contracting Brazilian economy. It has 10,311 employees.
Neeleman owns directly or indirectly 67 percent of the company's common shares.
"Following this offering, Mr. Neeleman will continue to control all shareholders' decisions, including the ability to appoint a majority of our board of directors," the prospectus says.
Neeleman holds dual U.S. and Brazilian citizenship. He was born in Brazil in 1959 where his father and mother, Gary and Rose Neeleman, lived while Gary Neeleman was a journalist for United Press International.
David Neeleman is known for embracing attention deficit disorder, which he suffers from, as a creative force in his business life.
Neeleman helped build Salt Lake-based Morris Air into a profitable business that was sold to Southwest Airline for $129 million.
After leaving Southwest, he cofounded Westjet in Canada in 1999 and then based his next airline venture, JetBlue, in New York City as a low-cost East Coast competitor.
He stepped aside as JetBlue CEO in May of 2007 after a major snowstorm pretty much shut down the airline for days. He was replaced as chairman in 2008.
Azul, the Portuguese word for blue, has flights outside of Brazil to Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as well as Lisbon, Portugal. In 2015, Neeleman and other investors got a toehold in Europe by buying an interest in the Portuguese airline Transportes Aéreos Portugueses.