SEGRO has raised £561m in a rights issue after shareholders took up almost 98% of the company’s initial offer.
The company had planned to raise £573m from a one-for-five rights issue to its shareholders and received valid acceptances for 97.8% of that by the deadline yesterday.
Joint bookrunners Merrill Lynch and UBS finished selling the balance today (28 March).
SEGRO’s share price has fallen more than 8% since it launched the rights issue and purchased Aviva’s 50% stake in their £1.1bn Airport Property Partnership joint venture on 10 March.
The fall was expected, analysts said, as the market priced in the new shares, which were sold to shareholders at a 28.9% discount to the closing price of 485p on 9 March. For every five shares of 485p there would be one share of 345p – an average price of 461p.
SEGRO opened at 458p today, less than 1% below that average price.
Alan Carter, salesman at Stifel, said the 98% take-up was a strong performance despite some initial concerns on the scale of the fund raise.
“The market was taken completely unawares by it, thinking, ‘Do they really need to do it now?’ But the case SEGRO put up for it was comprehensive and it was well received by the analytical community and, more importantly, the shareholders.”
He added: “SEGRO remains the only UK major REIT with genuine rental and capital growth prospects in its portfolio at present.”
SEGRO raised £325m in a share placing last September and later issued €500m (£446m) in unsecured bonds for its European Logistics Partnership joint venture with PSP Investments.
The new equity will be used in part to pay for the APP acquisition, with about £165m going into the development pipeline it established after its placing in September.
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