EBRD and ING become key-investors in Electrica

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has invested over 320 million lei (some 75 million euro) for an 8.6 percent stake in Electrica, becoming the second largest shareholder of Romania’s electricity distribution company upon completion of its initial public offering. ING, which placed subscription orders through several entities, part of the financial group, is the other major investor in Electrica, acquiring the third biggest stake, said Razvan Nicolescu, the Minister Delegate for Energy, according to Mediafax.

Having invested approximately 6.7 billion euro across 360 projects up to this point, along with additional 14 billion euro provided from other sources of financing, the EBRD is the largest institutional investor in Romania. The Bank’s involvement in Electrica’s privatization as a key investor follows the signing of a framework agreement with the company’s management on implementing a corporate governance action plan, as well as an environmental and social action plan.

“Electrica’s IPO – Romania’s largest to date – is a landmark transaction. Our participation demonstrates the EBRD’s commitment to supporting the government’s plans for increased privatization of the energy sector. We will work with the company towards the successful implementation of an ambitious set of measures to align its corporate governance with international standards. This will provide additional comfort and confidence to potential future investors”, said Nandita Parshad, Power and Energy Director at the EBRD, as per a press release.

With the majority stake sold in the IPO launched on June 16 and closed on June 25, a free float of 51.2 percent of Electrica’s securities will be available for trading from or around July 4, 2014 on both the Bucharest Stock Exchange, in the form of shares and the London Stock Exchange, in the form of Global Depository Receipts (GDRs), one GDR being equivalent to four shares.

Electrica has risen about 1.95 billion RON in the largest IPO run on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, as it was priced at low end of range given the price limits established (11 lei to 13.5 lei per share and 13.55 dollar to 16.63 dollar per GDR), the final offer price being set at 11 lei per share, while a GDR was valued at 13.66 dollar.  Thus, the company’s market cap comes to 3.81 billion lei.

The total of 177.2 million securities representing 105 percent of the shares in issue prior to the registration of capital increase and 51.2 percent of the shares in issue upon completion of capital increase was divided between 11,613 investors who purchased 142 million shares and around 8.8 million GDRs.

The offer was structured on three tranches:  small retail tranche which was allocated 7 percent of total shares, large retail tranche (8 percent) and institutional investors’ tranche which was assigned 85 percent of the available shares. However, the high oversubsciption rate recorded in retail investors’ determined a supplementation by 6 percent of the quota initially assigned (15 percent) transferring 10.6 million shares allotted to institutional investors to the retail tranche.

Hence, the securities granted to retail investors, either small or large, amounted to some 37.2 million, whereas the equities in the institutional investors’ tranche came to nearly 140 million units.

The Selling Syndicate includes Citigroup Global Markets Limited, Raiffeisen Bank S.A., Societe Generale Corporate and Investment Banking, BRD Group Societe Generale S.A. and SSIF Swiss Capital.

Electrica is the leading distributor and supplier of electricity in the domestic market. The group's core business segments are the supply and distribution of electricity which is the largest one in the domestic market both in terms of volume of electricity distributed to users and number of users.  According to ANRE, the National Energy Regulatory Authority, in 2013 the Electrica’s distribution business accounted for 39 percent of the electricity distributed in Romania – some 16 TWh of electric power which was distributed to about 3.6 million users. The supply operations included a similar number of users (around 3.56 million) and 9.7 TWh which represents 22.1 percent of the electric power supplied in the country.

Last year, Electrica posted consolidated revenues of approximately 5.2 billion lei (over 1.15 billion euro), while EBITDA amounted to 749 million lei (some 167 million euro).