Spanish incumbent Telefonica is to list 51% of the shares in its call centre subsidiary Atento on June 13, the company announced. In a stock exchange announcement yesterday, the company explained that the book-building period would start today, May…
Spanish incumbent Telefonica is to list 51% of the shares in its call centre subsidiary Atento on June 13, the company announced. In a stock exchange announcement yesterday, the company explained that the book-building period would start today, May 27.
The 30,600,000 ordinary shares will be offered in a single global tranche to qualified national and international institutional investors.
Telefonica added that it had granted managers a green-shoe option to purchase up to 3,060,000 additional shares, or 5.1% of outstanding shares.
The company has agreed an indicative and non-binding offering price range of E19.25 to E25 per share, and expects to set a definitive offering price on June 9. The price range would value the company at E1.15bn-E1.5bn.
The sale will be jointly coordinated by Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, with Banco Santander, BNP, JPMorgan and BBVA set to be bookrunners.
The sale reflects Telefonica’s increasing focus on its operations in Latin America, as state austerity measures continue to weigh it down at home.
Telefonica reportedly plans to cut its domestic workforce by around a fifth in the next three years to concentrate resources on Latin America.
It has also been trying to list a portion of Atento for some time. A planned flotation of a 20% stake in the group was called off in 2008 because of a difficult economic climate. At the time, the stake had been valued at around E300m.
