Icelandic salmon farmer raising £48m for growth
SalMar subsidiary Icelandic Salmon AS, formerly known as Arnarlax, is raising NOK 579 million (£48.4m) with a private placement of new and existing shares.
Icelandic Salmon, which also plans to list of the Oslo Stock Exchange’s Merkur Market, will use the majority of the proceeds to fund growth and development within its existing licence portfolio.
Its plans include investment in the expansion of smolt capacity, the upgrade of its processing facility at Bíldudalur, farming equipment, branding initiatives and biomass build-up.
Pension fund
The company is making a primary offering of up to 3,756,522 new shares to raise gross proceeds of NOK 432m, and a secondary offering of up to 1,281,518 existing shares to raise a further NOK 147m.
Three cornerstone investors have committed to apply for shares for a total amount of up to NOK 345.6m.
They are Iceland’s Gildi Pension Fund (NOK 216m), Icelandic fund manager Stefnir Asset Management Company (NOK 97.2m) and angel investor Edvin Austbø through Alden AS (32.4m).
Merkur Market
The placement began at 8am BST today and is due to close at 3.30pm tomorrow. Price per share has been set to NOK 115, which values Icelandic Salmon at NOK 3.06 billion based on the 26,614,042 shares currently outstanding in Icelandic Salmon.
Icelandic Salmon has applied for approval from the Oslo Stock Exchange to list its shares on the Merkur Market. The first day of trading on the Merkur Market is expected to be shortly after completion of the private placement and is currently expected to be on or about October 27.
Icelandic Salmon is Iceland’s largest salmon producer. It harvested 9,400 tonnes gutted weight in the first nine months of 2020, and expects to harvest 12,000 tgw for the full year.
