Keppel Infrastructure Trust to raise S$450m through placement, preferential offer

KEPPEL Infrastructure Trust (KIT) will raise S$450 million through a placement and a non-renounceable underwritten preferential offering of new units, its manager announced in a regulatory filing on Thursday.

About S$440.3 million of the proceeds will be used to partially repay a loan facility taken for the A$770 million (S$737.6 million) acquisition of Ixom HoldCo, a water treatment chemicals distributor, said the manager. The S$9.7 million remainder will go to related fees and expenses.

KIT unitholders approved the equity raising exercise at an extraordinary general meeting held on Feb 12.

Keppel Infrastructure Holdings (KIH), which has a direct interest in approximately 18.2 per cent of KIT units, said it will subscribe to the number of new units that will allow it to maintain its current unitholding.

The issue price of the placement and preference offer units has yet to be determined, but will not exceed a 10 per cent discount to the weighted average price of all trades done on the Singapore Exchange on March 12 and March 13 up until KIT called for a trading halt at 3.03pm on March 13. KIT last traded at S$0.485 before the halt. 

KIT also plans to declare a tax-exempt stub distribution of 0.8577 Singapore cent per unit to existing unitholders as "as a means to ensure fairness" to them. The payout will be for the period from Jan 1 to March 22, before the issuance of placement units and the preferential offering. Investors who own KIT units in their Central Depository securities accounts as at 5pm on March 22 will be entitled to the payout, which will be made on April 5.

Application for placement units will close on March 15. Placement issue and preferential offering issue prices are also expected to be announced on March 15.

Placement units will be issued on March 25, with trading of the new units commencing on the same day.

The application period for preferential units is from March 27 to April 4. The preferential units will be issued on April 12, and commence trading on April 15.

In-principle approval for the listing and quotation of the placement and preferential offer units has been obtained from SGX.

Credit Suisse (Singapore), DBS Bank, HSBC (Singapore) and UOB have been appointed as joint lead managers, bookrunners and underwriters.