Entain nets £600m in new share placement to advance STS deal

Entain Plc‘s board has successfully placed new ordinary shares, raising proceeds of £600m. The transaction comes 24 hours after the firm’s announcement that it had agreed for its Entain CEE subsidiary to acquire STS Group, Poland’s largest bookmaker for an agreed £750m deal.

This morning, Entain communicated that a total of 48,294,478 new ordinary shares of €0.01 each have been placed by Merrill Lynch International and Morgan Stanley, acting as joint global coordinators and bookrunners with the support of Banco Santander as a co-manager. 

The private bookbuild for institutional investors was held alongside a retail investor placement of 486,010 new ordinary shares via the PrimaryBid platform.

The new share placement was priced at £12.30 per share, reflecting a discount of approximately 6.9% to the closing share price of £13.22 on 13 June 2023. The newly-issued shares represent 8.3% of the company’s ordinary share capital prior to the placement and retail offer.

Entain announced that the combined share placements had hit the target of £600m in proceeds that will be used to fund 75% of the acquisition of STS Group.  The remaining 25% of funding will be processed by EMMA Capital, the private equity partner of Entain CEE.

Following the allocation of new shares, the total number of shares in issue in Entain Plc will be 637,643,878 ordinary shares, equating to the same number of voting rights.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and London Stock Exchange plc (LSE) have approved Entain’s admission of the new shares, which are expected to “become effective on or before 16 June 2023.