Dufry Group has concluded the rights offering for a tranche of new shares.

The sale was designed to leverage capital in part to buyout the remaining interests in Hudson Group, as well as for general corporate purposes such as funding the joint venture with Alibaba Group.

All 24,696,516 offered shares priced at CHF33.22/$36.6 per share have been sold, resulting in expected gross proceeds of CHF820 million/$903 million.

The new shares are expected to be listed and eligible for trading on SIX Swiss Exchange as of October 22.

ALIBABA BUFFERS SHAREHOLDING

The ordinary capital increase was approved at an Extraordinary General Meeting on 6 October.

In total, 10,612,024 new shares have been subscribed by existing shareholders.

Advent International and Alibaba Group have taken 9,178,033 and 4,906,459 new shares, respectively.

Before the launch of the offering, Dufry secured equity investment commitments to purchase new shares not taken up by existing shareholders from funds managed by Advent International Corporation or its affiliates and a wholly owned subsidiary of Alibaba Group.

“As the number of commitment shares exceeds the number of offered shares which were not subscribed for by existing shareholders, the offer price was set in line with the terms of the offering at the price at which the commitment investors placed binding orders in the international offering, being CHF33.22 per new share,” said Dufry.

“No new shares will be sold to the market in the international offering.”

Advent International will own an 11.4% stake in Dufry and Alibaba Group a 6.1% stake after the rights offering closes.

After the capital increase, the share capital of Dufry increases by CHF123,482,580 from CHF 277,835,830 to CHF 401,318,410, divided into 80,263,682 registered shares with a nominal value of CHF5.00 each.

Dufry and Alibaba Group have also agreed a term sheet under which the latter shall invest CHF 69.5 million in Dufry via mandatory convertible notes.

For this purpose, Dufry shall issue 3-year mandatory convertible notes with a 4.1% coupon per annum to Alibaba Group, convertible into approximately 2.1 million ordinary shares of Dufry at CHF 33.22 per Dufry share.