Infosys prices ADS issue at $53.5

Tuesday, 21 November 2006, 18:30 IST
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Bangalore: Infosys Technologies Ltd has priced its sponsored secondary offering of 30 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) at $53.5 per ADS, excluding underwriting discounts and commissions. According to a company statement here on Tuesday, the aggregate value of the offer is about $1.6 billion at the offer price. As part of the issue, five million ADS' have been earmarked for Japanese investors through a public offer without listing. Each ADS is equivalent to one equity share listed and traded on the Indian stock exchanges. "The company will not receive any proceeds from the issue. The net proceeds will be distributed to the shareholders selling their equity shares within 30 days of the offer closure," the statement said. The issue concluded Nov 17 with 3,477 valid offers for over 84 million equity shares being put for sale though the maximum offer size is 30 million shares. The unsold shares will be returned to the shareholders by Dec 4. The combined holdings of all shareholders who offered their shares were around 246 million equity shares. The latest offering enables Infosys to increase its ADS float on Nasdaq to 19 percent from 14 percent of the total stock (556 million equity shares) and qualify it to enter the prestigious Nasdaq 100 index. This is the third time in as many years the IT bellwether has sponsored an ADS issue to increase its stock liquidity in the overseas market by another five percent. The issue will increase the float to 107 million ADS' from 77 million ADS' presently. The previous two ADS offerings were made in 2003 and 2005, with 24 million shares and 32 million shares at $12.25 and $33.5 per equity share valued at $294 million and $1.07 billion respectively. The volume, price and value are on the basis of the stock split the company made in the last fiscal (FY 2006), making one equity share equivalent to one ADS. The ADS offering was lead-managed by ABN AMRO Bank NV, Hong Kong branch, and N.M. Rothschild & Sons (Hong Kong) Ltd, each trading as ABN AMRO Rothschild, Banc of America Securities LLC, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Goldman Sachs (Asia) LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. and Nomura Singapore Ltd. UBS AG Nomura Securities Ltd was the sole book runner for the POWL. Enam Financial Consultants Ltd acted as the Indian financial advisor.
Source: IANS