ConvaTec, the giant Danish wound care and colostomy supply maker, hauled in about $1.8 billion in the biggest initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange this year despite difficult market conditions.
ConvaTec’s offering launched against a backdrop of an IPO market that had seen global equity deals slide about 30%, which was made even more uncertain following Britain’s move earlier this year to abandon the European Union.
Still, the company began conditional trading under the symbol “CTEC” at $2.75, which was slightly below the projected range of $3.37 to $2.76. ConvaTec said its total market capitalization is about $5.3 billion. Full trading is slated to begin next week.
Yet, according to unnamed sources cited by Reuters, the offering was oversubscribed with about 40% of the buyers coming from the U.S., mostly in the form of long-term investors.
ConvaTec, which is owned by private equity firms Avista Capital Partners and Nordic Capital, said it put up 33.8% of its shares in the 660-million share offering.
Avista and Nordic acquired Convatec for $4.1 billion from Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2008. As part of the public offering, Sir Christopher Gent, former chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, was named chairman of ConvaTec.
“We are very pleased by the investor interest in our IPO and we are delighted to welcome our new shareholders,” Paul Moraviec, ConvaTec’s CEO, said in a statement. “We look forward to the benefits which a public listing will create for our company and for our customers, who rely on ConvaTec’s products and services.”
Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and UBS acted as joint global coordinators on the deal, while Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Cazenove and Morgan Stanley were joint bookrunners.