Hollywood veteran Robert Halmi and his son, Robert, helped to build an entertainment firm back in the late 1970s -- and it turned out to be a great success. In fact, by 1994 they sold it off to Hallmark Cards. Then, in 2006 Robert teamed up with Kelso (a private equity firm) to acquire Hallmark Entertainment, which was renamed RHI Entertainment (NASDAQ: RHIE)

And, this week, RHI has hit the public markets - pricing its IPO at $14 per share.

Essentially, RHI develops and distributes made-for-television content and mini-series. Last year, the company posted $232 million in revenues and adjusted EBITDA of $33 million.

A key asset is RHI's film library, which includes more than 1,000 titles (or 3,500 broadcast hours). No doubt, this is a big source of future cash flows. What's more, the company is expanding into new categories, such as video-on-demand and pay-per-view.

Some of RHI's customers include ABC, CBS (NYSE: CBS), GE's (NYSE: GE) NBC, Spike TV and USA Network. There are also deals with global broadcasters, such as Antena-3, M6, PROSIEBEN-SAT1, TF1, Seven Network and Sky.

Unfortunately, the IPO market has been rocky lately. As a result, RHI had a dicey start - with the stock price falling 3.57% to $13.50 in today's trading.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.

RHI's IPO gets so-so ratings originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.