Bega Cheese has netted $172.7 million from a share offer to institutional investors and existing shareholders launched in June.
The NSW South Coast dairy processor has confirmed it has accepted all valid applications from the second stage of its share offer, which issued 9.5m new shares for $5.25 each to 4194 shareholders.
Early last month Bega took ownership of the famous Vegemite brand and other spread and sauce lines from Kraft’s parent company, Mondelez, having paid $460m for the Australian grocery business.
It launched the capital raising to help shore up it capital base after the big spend, offering smaller Bega Cheese shareholders the chance to buy up to $15,000 new shares each for 10 cents/share less than it had offered shares to institutions in the first stage of the capital raising.
Bega shares have been trading around $6.44 this week.
“I am delighted with the strong support we received for the share purchase plan offer from our shareholders,” said Bega executive chairman, Barry Irvin.
Existing institutional shareholders had earlier rushed to grab their slice of Bega Cheese and blocked any new big stakeholders joining the register when the initial offering was made in late June.
Within a day of Bega announcing it would issue 22.9 million new shares to institutions at $5.35 each, that offer was over-subscribed.
Wrapping up the offer this week, the company said the new shares were expected to be issued today.