By Jaiveer Shekhawat and Echo Wang

(Reuters) -Partners Group-backed KinderCare Learning Companies notched a market valuation of about $3.1 billion after its shares opened 12.5% above its initial public offering price on its NYSE debut on Wednesday.

KinderCare's shares opened at $27, after the firm had priced its offering at $24 apiece to raise $576 million.

The demand for childcare services in the United States is rising due to firms implementing return-to-office protocols following the pandemic and an increased participation rate of women in the workforce.

"All the growth opportunities we've been delivering over the last few years is what we're going to continue to do, and do it (at a) more accelerated (pace)," said Paul Thompson, chief executive officer of KinderCare.

"We'll focus on new center openings through Greenfield (investment). And we all the time are doing smaller (deals), what we refer to as a tuck-in acquisition…(that) will continue as well," he added.

Founded in 1969, KinderCare, which has several brands including KCLC, Crème School and Champions, provides daycare facilities and early childhood education for children ranging from six weeks to 12 years of age.

The company can accommodate over 200,000 children across its centers as of June, making it one of the largest private providers of early childhood education. It makes most of its revenue from these centers, which reported $1.25 billion in the first half of 2024, up nearly 5% from a year earlier.

KinderCare was initially slated to go public in late 2021 but the listing was postponed, with the company citing "regulatory delays".

Its listed peer Bright Horizons Family Solutions holds a market cap of about $7.9 billion.

Swiss private equity firm Partners Group owns a 71.1% stake in KinderCare and remains a controlling shareholder.

The offering was underwritten by more than 10 Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays and JPMorgan.

(Reporting by Vedant Vinayak Vichare and Jaiveer Shekhawat in Bengaluru and Echo Wang in New York; Editing by Vijay Kishore, Krishna Chandra Eluri and Shreya Biswas)