Atlantic Sapphire has issued a private placement of its Oslo, Norway-listed shares, raising NOK 906 million (USD 100 million, EUR 84.6 million) through a private placement of 8.87 million new shares.
Those shares were sold at a price per share of NOK 102 (USD 11.28, EUR 9.52), equal to the closing price on Oslo Stock Exchange. According to a statement from the company, the private placement was “significantly oversubscribed.”
The private placement took place through an accelerated bookbuilding process managed by DNB Markets and Arctic Securities after close of markets on 9 September.
“I want to thank our shareholders and our excellent advisors DNB Markets and Arctic Securities for a tremendous capital raise today,” Atlantic Sapphire CEO Johan Andreassen said on Twitter. “We were planning to raise USD 70 [million] but decided to raise USD 100 [million] with a demand of USD 250 [million].”
According to a notice from the company, the net proceeds will go toward partial repayment and cancellation of existing credit facility – a USD 20 million (EUR 16.9 million) term loan – and repayment and cancellation of USD 30 million (EUR 25.3 million) in short-term facility — in total USD 50 million (EUR 42.2 milllion) in repayment to DNB Bank ASA, strengthening the company’s balance sheet, paying for general corporate expenses, and assisting the acceleration of further expansion.
The company’s potential private placement was announced on Wednesday, 9 September, along with news that its chief financial officer, Jose Prado, left his position sometime within the past month, soon after the company’s second-quarter results were released. The results publicized significant cost overruns at its recirculating aquaculture system farm under construction outside of Miami, Florida, U.S.A.
Construction on the facility is far behind schedule – originally the company was set to begin commercial harvest in April, then the third quarter of 2020, and now just the largest fish will be harvested in September.
Atlantic Sapphire CEO Karl-Oystein Oyehaug will take over Prado's CFO duties while the group recruits a replacement.
The company remains optimistic about its expansion to the U.S. despite recent setbacks.
“We are very, very satisfied with the quality of the product we are producing,” Andreassen in a 28 August conference call. “It has a fantastic taste, quality, and texture to the extent that I think it has never been seen before in the U.S. market. The U.S. consumer is not used to buying what we call ‘fresh’ because of the distance it is from the source and the freshness and the product quality and the extended shelf-life, which goes toward less shrink on the shelves.”
The company now expects the construction needed for phase two expansion to begin during the second quarter of 2021 – the company previously stated that it expected to more than double production at that stage.
Photo courtesy of Johan Andreassen/Twitter
