Annington shares in demand since watered-down IPO

Germany’s largest landlord Deutsche Annington succeeded in getting a watered-down version of its IPO away to investors, after being forced to abort its original launch at the beginning of July at the last moment due to lack of investor demand.

Having hastily reviewed its options following the IPO cancellation, the company’s owners Terra Firma opted for a reduced offering and, in an accelerated bookbuilding, it placed all offered shares at €16.50, below the bottom end of the original price spectrum, raising €575m.

This represented a halving of the original aborted IPO attempt which would have raised €1.13bn at the mid-point of the then price range, giving a full market cap of €4.3bn with a free float of 25.7%

As it was, some 35m shares were placed, including 24m new shares from a capital increase and 10.5m from the selling shareholder Monterey, a holding company of UK private equity group Terra Firma. Demand was three to four times higher than the offering, according to investment banking sources, with the share price currently trading at around the €18.00 range.

The capital increase brought the company a much-needed €378m in net proceeds, with 15.5% of the company’s 224m shares now in free float. The market capitalisation of the group is now about €4.03bn.