Further to our report last night that the founding group of CFD broker Plus500 Ltd (LON:PLUS) was planning to sell some of its stake in the company in a secondary share sale organized by broker Liberum Capital, Plus500 this morning announced that the deal was completed, on the terms which were expected.
Plus500’s founders (see list below) sold 7.27 million shares, at £11.00 per share, for a total take of £80 million (USD $110 million). That price marks a 5.4% discount to Plus500’s closing share price Thursday of £11.63. The founders’ combined stake in Plus500 has thus been reduced from 22% to 16%. The shareholders agreed to a 180 day lockup on their remaining shares.
|
Resultant shareholding after Placing Shares have been sold |
|||
|
Founder |
Number of Placing Shares |
Shares |
% |
|
Alon Gonen1 |
3,400,732 |
8,491,539 |
7.45 |
|
Gal Haber2 |
1,203,640 |
3,005,457 |
2.64 |
|
Elad Ben-Izhak3 |
1,203,640 |
3,005,457 |
2.64 |
|
Omer Elazari |
732,358 |
1,828,683 |
1.61 |
|
Shlomi Weizmann |
732,358 |
1,828,683 |
1.61 |
|
Total |
7,272,728 |
18,159,819 |
15.94 |
(1) The shares are registered in the name of Sparta24 Ltd.
(2) The shares are registered in the name of Wavesoft Ltd.
(3) The shares are registered in the name of Smarty Ltd.
Plus500 shares are reacting by trading down by about 7% at the open this morning, sitting at £10.87 as of the time of writing (08:15 GMT). That is a much milder reaction than the last time the founding group sold shares in a similar fashion, back in a September 2016 secondary offering, when Plus500 shares opened the next morning down 16% from the previous close.
We’d note that Plus500 are near a 52-week and all-time high, driven up by the company continuing to produce record financial results, including for the recently-announced fourth quarter of 2017 which saw Plus500 bring in $132 million of Revenues.
Plus500 itself was not a party to the sale, other than its requirement to make the necessary regulatory filings, and the company did not receive any proceeds from the offering.
The full text of the Plus500 announcement from this morning reads as follows:
Plus500 Limited
(“Plus500” or “the Company”)
Result of Placing of 7,272,728 Existing Ordinary Shares in Plus500
Further to the announcement made earlier today, Plus500, a leading online trading platform provider for retail customers to trade CFD internationally, announces that the founders of the Company (the “Founders”) have notified Plus500 that they have sold an aggregate of 7,272,728 ordinary shares in the capital of the Company at a price of £11.00 per share (the “Placing”) raising aggregate gross proceeds of £80.0 million for the Founders.
The Placing is expected to settle on a T+5 basis on 9 March 2018, subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain customary conditions. The Company is not a party to the Placing and will not receive any proceeds from the Placing.
The Founders have agreed with Liberum not to sell any further ordinary shares they hold in the capital of the Company for a period of 180 days after completion of the Placing.
The Placing was executed through Liberum Capital Limited.