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Wednesday 22nd April 2009 |
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The company received subscriptions for 554 million ordinary shares, valued at $127.4 million, short of the 557.6 million on offer. The remaining 23.6 million will be taken up by First NZ Capital under the underwriting agreement, bringing the total to $132.8 million.
The new shares will be issued on April 23 and First NZ then has four days to exercise an option requiring Nuplex to allocate a further 99 million new shares to sub-underwriters at the same 23 cents apiece.
Chairman Rob Aitken thanked shareholders for supporting the issue and said the response represented “a strong level of take-up.”
The shares dropped 9.8% to 37 cents today and are down about 67% this year. Among stocks on the NZX 50, only F&P Appliances has fallen as much, with a 65% declined this year. The appliance manufacturer, whose shares fell 2.2% to 44 cents today, has an $80 million short-term loan-facility coming due on April 30 and investors are awaiting its announcement on refinancing.
Nuplex said about 12% of its rights traded on the NZX during the time of its offer.
Nuplex turned to investors to bolster its balance sheet after the value of foreign debt surged with the New Zealand dollar’s decline. At the same time, earnings fell in the first half of the 2009 business year, reflecting the global economic downturn.
That combination of events pushed Nuplex’s senior debt cover ratio to above the covenant requirement of 3.00 times. Its banks agreed to revised terms of its senior debt cover ratio, waiving the requirement that it be no more than 3 times in the period up to April 30 and allowing the ratio to reach 3.5 times between May 1 and June 29, easing back to 3.25 times from June 30 to September 29 and back to 3 from September 30.
The banks imposed conditions on the agreement, including capping dividend payments at 60% of net profit, applying any assets sales proceeds over $2 million to debt repayment and taking a general security over the company’s Australian and New Zealand assets.
Businesswire.co.nz
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