Private equity firms to sell a third of Denmark’s TDC
THE FIVE private equity owners of Danish telecoms player TDC will bank up to £2.35bn from the sale of a third of the group through a share buyback and public offering.
The partial exit of Apax Partners, Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Permira Advisers and Providence Equity Partners effectively relaunches TDC on the Copenhagen bourse in one of the biggest European public offerings of 2010.
The firms originally bought TDC in 2005 in what was then the largest European leveraged buyout in history.
The majority owners said they had priced the offering of 210 million shares at 51 krone per share, the middle of an earlier narrowed range of 50-52 krone per share.
The share sale is the latest example of private equity firms making the most of a relative resurgence in demand for equity offerings in Europe to cash in on investments they made several years ago.
It follows a successful debut offering by Danish jeweller Pandora in October.
The private equity consortium stand to raise 12.3 billion krone (£1.38bn) from the sale if an over-allotment option of 31.5 million shares is exercised.
They will also pocket 8.7 billion krone from a share buyback by TDC, expected to settle on Dec. 13-15, which is part of a plan to re-leverage the company.
Together the sale and share buyback by TDC will cut the stake held by the consortium to about 55.4 per cent from 87.9 per cent – if the overallotment is fully exercised.
They are expected to sell down their remaining stakes in the future.
Around 10,000 investors bought shares in the offering, the company said, with 16 per cent being sold to retail investors.
A source close to the deal said it saw good demand from both Nordic and international institutions, and investors were attracted by the stock’s high dividend yield of 8.5 per cent.