Bats Global Markets is set to go public Friday

Bats Global Markets will sell a stake of as much as $253 million in the electronic stock exchange operator in its initial public offering set for Friday.

The share sale is about $40 million more than originally planned.

The Lenexa-based company, which is the second biggest exchange for U.S. stocks, will sell 13.3 million shares at $17 to $19 each, according to an updated filing Thursday. It had planned to sell 11.2 million.

The firm’s investors also added an option to sell more stock than previously planned. Stockholders — including Bank of America, Knight Capital Holdings and Goldman Sachs Group — can now sell as many as 2 million additional shares, which would boost the total size of the IPO to 15.3 million shares, according to the filing. Bats won’t receive any of the proceeds from the offering because only its current stockholders are selling shares.

Bats is being viewed as a potential icebreaker for what’s been the slowest start to the year for U.S. public listings since the recession. If it lists successfully, the exchange operator will be the biggest company to go public in 2016. It will also be the first IPO outside of the biotechnology industry.

Bats has tried to go public before, back in 2012. That time, a software error on its own stock exchange forced it to cancel the listing. The company is again planning to sell shares on its own exchange.

The IPO will still value Bats at as much as $1.8 billion, more than double the amount of its aborted first attempt to list shares four years ago.

This story was originally published April 14, 2016 at 11:47 AM with the headline "Bats Global Markets is set to go public Friday."