Eco World's unit to subscribe 27% of EWI shares and warrants respectively

KUALA LUMPUR (March 23): Eco World Development Group Bhd’s wholly-owned subsidiary Eco World Capital (International) Sdn Bhd (EW Capital) would subscribe 648 million new shares with 259.2 million free warrants or 27% of the new Eco World International Bhd (EWI) shares and warrants, respectively.

As such, the final subscription price of RM777.6 million would be satisfied via bank borrowings and proceeds from the placement that was completed on March 6.

This follows the completion of the bookbuilding process under the institutional offering and closing of the retail and institutional offering, Eco World said in a filing with Bursa Malaysia today.

While the institutional price has been fixed at RM1.20 per initial public offering (IPO) share, the exercise price for the warrants has been fixed at RM1.45 apiece, which represents 121% of the final retail price and rounded down to the nearest sen.

Yesterday, EWI said its public subscription was oversubscribed 8.87 times, with 23,568 applications for 473.66 million shares received from Malaysians against the 48 million offer shares available for subscription, offered at RM1.20 apiece.

The institutional offering involves the issuance of 449.46 million IPO shares at RM1.20 apiece, of which 212.4 million shares are allocated to three cornerstone investors, namely Permodalan Nasional Bhd, Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (Diperbadankan) and the Employees Provident Fund Board. This represents 47.3% of the institutional offering and about 8.9% of the enlarged issued share capital of EWI.

The remaining 237.06 million IPO shares are allocated to Malaysian and foreign institutional and selected investors.

Under the IPO, EWI, the overseas property arm of Eco World, proposes to issue 2.1 billion shares, and expects to raise gross proceeds of RM2.8 billion for working capital, land acquisition and repay bank borrowings.

At 10.24am, Eco World remained unchanged at RM1.50, with 1.49 million shares done for a market capitalisation of RM4.4 billion. — theedgemarkets.com

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