It has been a busy past few weeks for Icelandic salmon farmer Arnarlax, in which the SalMar subsidiary changed its name to Icelandic Salmon AS, has culminated with the producer achieving a listing on share trading facility Merkur Market.
Bíldudalur-based Icelandic Salmon completed its private placement with a total transaction size of approximately NOK 647 million (USD 69.7 million, EUR 59 million) through the allocation of 5,629,344 shares at a price of NOK 115 (USD 12.40, EUR 10.50) per share.
With strong investor interest, the private placement raised gross proceeds of approximately NOK 500 million (USD 53.9 million, EUR 45.6 million) for the company through the sale of 4,347,826 new shares (the primary offering), and approximately NOK 147 million (USD 15.8 million, EUR 13.4 million) to Pactum AS and Gyda EHF, owned by board chairman Kjartan Olafsson, through the sale of 1,281,518 existing shares (the secondary offering).
Icelandic Salmon said that it intends to use the net proceeds from the primary offering to fund growth and develop its value chain within its existing license portfolio, including investment in the expansion of smolt capacity, upgrade its processing facility at Bíldudalur, farming equipment, branding initiatives, and biomass build-up.
The first day of trading on Merkur Market is expected to be on or about 27 October, 2020.
As previously reported by SeafoodSource, the producer harvested 1,700 metric tons (MT) of salmon in the second quarter of this year, down from 2,800 MT in the corresponding period of 2019. The quarter’s harvest mainly derived from sites that had suffered a high rate of mortality due to winter wounds earlier in the year. The low volume also led to poor capacity utilization at the harvesting plant.
Operating revenues totaled NOK 99 million (USD 10.7 million, EUR 9 million) for the quarter, down from NOK 177 million (USD 19.1 million, EUR 16.1 million).
It is expected to harvest 12,000 MT of salmon this year.
Photo courtesy of Arnarlax/Icelandic Salmon AS
