Campari closes 650 million share placement, convertible at 550 million. Stock market goes down

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - The capital strengthening completed to finance the acquisition of Courvoisier puts Davide Campari on the ropes at Piazza Affari. The group's shares were the worst-performing of the FTSE MIB, dropping more than six points. Before the opening of the market, Campari announced that it had placed new ordinary shares of EUR 650 million with accelerated bookbuilding, at EUR 9.33 per share, as well as a convertible bond to 2029 of EUR 550 million . "As envisaged as part of the Courvoisier acquisition of 14 December on the various financing alternatives, with this placement the group has taken advantage of the favourable market conditions to optimise its financing structure," a statement read.

Campari, following the reported on 9 January, successfully placed new ordinary shares of the company, with a nominal value of 0.01 each, for gross proceeds of approximately EUR 650 million, in an accelerated bookbuilding offer placement, at EUR 9.33 per ordinary share, and a total nominal amount of senior unsecured convertible bonds maturing in 2029 of EUR 550 million, convertible into new and/or existing ordinary shares of the company. The net proceeds will be used to finance the transaction and for general corporate purposes. As stated in a note, 'the placement will improve the group's pro forma capital structure by accelerating the deleverage process and will lengthen the average maturity of the group's liabilities, thereby further strengthening the issuer's financial profile, enabling further growth'.

The joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners carried out, concurrently with the placement of the Convertible Bonds, a simultaneous accelerated placement of existing ordinary shares of Campari on behalf of those subscribers to the Convertible Bonds who wished to sell short such shares to purchasers procured by the joint global coordinators for the purpose of hedging against the market risk arising from the Bonds subscribed by them. The placement price of the Delta Placement shares is equal to the issue price of the new shares, and the issuer will not receive proceeds, directly or indirectly, from any sale of the Delta Placement shares. The Placing and the concurrent Delta Placement were conducted through an accelerated bookbuilding offer to qualified investors.

"According to our calculations, the acquisition of Courvoisier in the short term would have brought leverage close to the levels that management considers as a ceiling (3.5 times) and therefore we believe that the rationale for this financing operation could be to gain financial flexibility, possibly also in view of a possible new acquisition, as also anticipated by the CEO in a recent interview," Equita analysts comment. Experts now estimate a leverage at the end of 2025 of 2 times, compared to the 2.8 at which it would have arrived with all-debt financing and the 1.6 pre-acquisition.

"With this mix of financing," they add, "according to our calculations the impact of the acquisition on adjusted earnings per share at 2025-27E becomes slightly negative (-1/2%)", although it is "more than offset by the decline in interest rates". Equita raised its target to EUR 11.4 and confirmed its 'hold' recommendation. "We believe that this financing structure is effective because it allows Campari to maintain a balanced financial position with room for further potential M&A transactions," Banca Akros' experts confirmed for their part, reiterating their 'accumulate' rating.