EURONAV announces that it has raised $125 million in total in gross cash proceeds through a private placement of 10,556,808 new shares to institutional investors selected through an accelerated book build offering. Following strong demand, Euronav decided to upsize the initial offering from $100 million to $125 million.
All of the newly issued shares were placed at a price of €8.70 per share (or $11.84 at the current EUR/USD exchange rate of 1.3610), at a 3% discount to the previous day’s closing price. The new shares represent 8.05% of the new total number of outstanding shares.
Petercam NV, acting as Settlement Agent, and one core shareholder entered into a share swap agreement in order to deliver listed shares to all investors who receive allocated shares in the private placement. As part of this share swap agreement the core shareholder will deliver up to 10,000,000 existing and listed shares to the Settlement Agent. The core shareholder will receive in exchange the same number of newly issued non-listed shares. The listing on Euronext Brussels of all other newly issued shares (not subject to the aforementioned share swap agreement) will be requested immediately after their issue. The shares that the core shareholder will receive as a result of the share swap will be listed upon approval of a listing prospectus by the FSMA on a later date.
The funds raised will be used by EURONAV to partially finance its purchase of four VLCC vessels.
Settlement will take place on July 14, 2014.
Petercam NV is acting as Global Coordinator and Settlement Agent and together with Deutsche Bank AG, London Branch, and DNB ASA as Joint Book Runners for the placing of the new shares. The Book Runners were advised by Linklaters LLP and Argo Law advised Euronav on the Belgian legal aspects of the offering.
The company is still of the view that a more balanced tonnage list coupled with increased ton-miles should help to further improve the state of the tanker market for the rest of 2014 and 2015. In this regard the company does not intend to place speculative newbuilding orders, but continues to see value in the secondhand market.
euronav.com