Private equity firm CVC Capital Partners and Royal Bank of Scotland have sold another batch of shares in Samsonite International, the world’s biggest travel luggage company, raising a combined HK$2.24 billion ($289 million).
The sale was conducted over the weekend, about four months after their previous sell-down in mid-September when the two pre-IPO shareholders raised a total of $287 million at a 3.3% discount.
Like the September transaction, the latest deal was done on the back of reverse inquiries and it was completed as a club-type deal. The process began on Saturday evening and it was wrapped up by Sunday evening, a source said yesterday.
The reverse inquiries came from both existing and new shareholders and the deal was significantly oversubscribed, the source noted. It attracted long-only and hedge fund investors, and there were some good quality large long-only orders.
CVC and RBS sold a combined 138.3 million shares at HK$16.20 each, which represented a 4.9% discount to Friday’s close of HK$17.04. The deal wasn’t marketed either at a fixed price or with a specific price range, but HK$16.20 was where the anchors and the biggest orders came in, the source said.
The deal size accounted for about 10% of the company. About 65% of the shares were sold by CVC, while the remaining 35% came from RBS.
The transaction will reduce the combined stake of the two firms to about 15.1% of the company, from 24.9% before the deal, the source said. Of the 24.9%, CVC owned 16.2% and RBS 8.7%, according to the Hong Kong stock exchange’s website.
Their remaining shares will be locked up for 90 days.
Samsonite’s share price fell 3.3% yesterday to HK$16.48, which is above the placement price. That compares with the Hang Seng Index, which finished up 0.6%.
The stock, which was listed in Hong Kong in June 2011, is currently 13.7% above September’s sell-down price of HK$14.50, which was equal to the IPO price.
CVC bought Samsonite in July 2007 for $1.7 billion. RBS provided financing for the deal and when Samsonite had financial difficulties in 2009 the UK bank ended up swapping some of its debt into a minority equity stake. Both firms sold about 40% of their respective holdings in Samsonite’s $1.25 billion IPO in 2011.
They also teamed up in April of 2012 to sell 18% of their stake, or 8% of the company, through a block trade that raised $216 million. That deal was priced at HK$14.90, which represented a 4.7% discount to the latest close. It was arranged by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Goldman Sachs was the sole bookrunner both for the latest transaction and the September sell-down.
With the IPO pipeline looking rather thin before Chinese New Year, placements have been in the spotlight since the start of the year in Asia. Last week saw a number of such deals, including two in Southeast Asia: Philippine conglomerate GT Capital and its controlling shareholder sold $350 million worth of shares, while a Temasek-controlled entity raised $685 million from its third sell-down in Thailand’s Shin Corp.
One of the notable deals in Hong Kong was Carlyle’s $796 million sale of its remaining shares in China Pacific Insurance.
