Category: Equity

Low-cost airline Viva Aerobus filed for an initial public offering on Mexico’s stock exchange Thursday. It has mandated Barclays as global coordinator, with Banorte-Ixe and HSBC local bookrunners. The transaction includes a secondary share sale by Mexican transport conglomerate IAMSA and three private investment vehicles controlled by airline investor Irelandia Aviation. The primary portion will go towards upgrading the fleet, paying debt and building working capital. The firm reported revenues of $217m in the first 9 months of 2013.

LQ Inversiones Financieras has mandated Citi as global coordinator and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BTG Pactual, and Deutsche Bank as bookrunners on the sale of 6.7bn shares in Banco de Chile. The company is roadshowing in Chile and Brazil next week, and London and the US the following week. The deal is set to be priced on January 28 according to an SEC prospectus filed on Tuesday. The share sale would trim LQIF’s holdings in the Chilean lender to 51%, from 58.4%. The bank’s American Depositary Shares — equal to 600 common shares — closed at $81.07 each on Tuesday. Banco de Chile is the country’s largest lender, with a 19.3% market share. It reported assets of CLP25,261bn ($50.1bn) at the end of the third quarter.

Brazilian agribusiness firm Kepler Weber is tussling with development bank BNDES over the value of equity warrants, and the extent to which existing shareholders are set to be diluted when they are exercised. Kepler, which manufactures grain production equipment, sold 113,321 debentures and warrants to BNDESPar in 2007. The firm says warrant each should be worth 25.4 Kepler shares on conversion, which would dilute shareholders by 9.9%. BNDESPar calculates it should get 41 shares, which would result in a 15.1% dilution. BNDESPar owns more than 99% of the firm’s debentures, which in turn account for around half of Kepler’s outstanding debt, says Felipe Fontes, investor relations official at the firm. Kepler reported net revenues of BRL19.8m in the third quarter. Pension fund Previ and Banco do Brasil Investimentos are the largest shareholders in the firm, with 17.6% and 17.5%, respectively. The firm’s shares were trading at BRL37.17 apiece on Monday, down from BRL41.09 on January 2.

Some 44 international investors subscribed to CVC Brasil Operadora e Agencia de Viagens December IPO, taking slightly less than half the deal, the firm said on Friday. International accounts took 18.8m shares, some 48% of the total sold. The travel agency IPO brought in BRL621m ($236m) for the sellers, mainly comprising US private equity firm Carlyle and co-founder Guilherme Paulus. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BTG Pactual, Itau, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley priced the shares at BRL16.00 each, below the BRL18 to BRL22 range.

Latam Airlines raised $156m through the sale of 10.3m shares at the minimum price on Thursday. The oversubscribed deal was the firm’s sell-down of stock not taken up in a December rights issue. Leads BTG Pactual, Credicorp, and JPMorgan priced the transaction at $15.17 per share, equal to CLP8,072.6. Some 450 accounts placed orders totaling CLP114.7bn ($216.6m). Orders from 64 accounts, but accounting for two-thirds of the demand, were competitive bids, with maximum buy prices stipulated. Ultimately, foreign investors and local pension funds were pro-rated by a factor of 88.5%, less than local institutional investors, retail investors, and others.

Latam Airlines Group is expected to release pricing and subscription details today on its sell-down of the 10.3m shares that were left from its December rights offering. BTG Pactual, Credicorp Capital and JPMorgan took orders on the deal between Tuesday and Thursday. The minimum price was $15.17 per share, equal to the sale price in the rights offering, which raised $784m. Latam’s shares closed at $15.45 on Thursday.

Chilean investment firm LQ Inversiones Financieras is planning to sell 6.9bn shares in Banco de Chile. The seller described the deal as part of a continual search to increase liquidity in Banco de Chile shares among international accounts. The secondary sale would be in the local market and in the US through its American Depositary Shares, which equal 600 local stocks. The bank’s ADS closed at $83.65 on the NYSE on Thursday, meaning the share sale could raise close to $1bn for the seller.

Grupo Santo Domingo, which holds a 14% stake in SABMiller, has agreed to inject EUR100m in equity into Spanish real estate manager and developer Inmobiliaria Colonial. The Spanish firm is in the process of restructuring its debt. The capitalization will be at a maximum price of EUR0.50 per share comes with a number of conditions, including that the developer refinances a syndicated loan with a longer tenor. Colonial’s shares closed at EUR0.87 on Wednesday.

BTG Pactual, Credicorp Capital and JPMorgan are due to close books tomorrow on a sale of the 10.3m shares unsold in Latam Airlines Group’s December rights offering. The deal could raise $156m, if all shares are sold at the $15.17 minimum price. That equals the sale price in the firm’s rights offering. In the December sale, the firm raised $784m when stockholders subscribed to 51.7m shares, 83% of the total available. The transaction was opened on Tuesday.

Grupo Gigante has filed for an IPO of Office Depot de Mexico, mandating BBVA Bancomer and Credit Suisse. The all-secondary sale comes after Grupo Gigante took full control of the firm in June last year, buying the 50% of the Mexican retailer that it did not own from Office Depot for MXN8.77bn ($691m). Gigante took out a $342.9m bridge loan to fund the acquisition. It has repaid half of that, and plans to use funds raised in the IPO to repay the remainder. Office Depot Mexico, had an ebitda of $87.8m in the first 9 months last year, according to a regulatory filing. The firm, established in 1995, has retail outlets in Central America and Colombia as well as Mexico.