German MVNO Drillisch has sold more than five million treasury shares at €27.50 apiece to raise €142.7m (US$177.5m), as it looks to boost its ability to make acquisitions.
Earlier this month, Drillisch said it had the outline of an agreement with…
German MVNO Drillisch has sold more than five million treasury shares at €27.50 apiece to raise €142.7m (US$177.5m), as it looks to boost its ability to make acquisitions.
Earlier this month, Drillisch said it had the outline of an agreement with Telefonica Deutschland to purchase the Yourfone brand for between €50m and €100m.
Drillisch sold all of its 5,189,015 treasury shares – equal to 9.76% of the company – at a discount of 5.17% to its €29.00 closing price on 24 November and Berenberg acted as the sole global coordinator.
In a statement the company said: “By the placement of its treasury shares, Drillisch increases its financial flexibility in relation to general corporate purposes as well as in relation to business acquisitions.”
The telco’s shares were down 3.8% today, trading around the €27.90 point. Drillisch has a market capitalisation of €1.48bn.
The Yourfone agreement allows Drillisch to purchase the brand and its 235,000 customers in January from Telefonica Deutschland, which acquired Yourfone through its acquisition of E-Plus earlier this year.
Drillisch approached Telefonica about buying the brand during discussions about its MVNO arrangement, which was part of the remedies Telefonica agreed to with regulators to get its E-Plus acquisition over the line. The Yourfone deal is not part of the remedies package.
In the summer, Telefonica gave Drillisch access to 20% of its mobile network capacity over a five-year period and the option to acquire rights to use a further 10% of its capacity.
Subsequently, it has agreed to sell a number of its stores to Drillisch, which has outlined plans to add three and a half million LTE customers between 2015 and 2019. It currently has two million subscribers spread over a range of consumer MVNO brands, according to data from Berenberg.
