Leader Environmental Tech to place up to 470.6m shares to raise S$80m

LEADER Environmental Technologies (LET) has proposed to place up to 470.6 million new shares at S$0.17 apiece to raise a total sum of around S$80 million, assuming that its upsize option is fully exercised.

The placement price represents a discount of about 9.2 per cent to the volume-weighted average price of S$0.187 per share for trades done on the Singapore Exchange on Jan 29, 2021.

It also represents a premium of about 14.1 per cent to the volume weighted average price of S$0.149 per share for the one-month period prior to Jan 29.

In a bourse filing late on Sunday night, LET said it plans to place up to 352.9 million new shares to raise about S$60 million.

The China-based group may further decide to exercise its upsize option to increase the size of the placement and issue up to 117.6 million additional shares - worth about S$20 million - to LET chairman and chief executive officer Lin Yucheng.

Dr Lin is a substantial shareholder of the company, holding 198 million shares or 14.9 per cent of LET's existing issued and paid-up share capital.

Assuming the upsize option is exercised in full and that all shares are placed out, LET's issued share capital will increase from 1.3 billion shares (excluding treasury shares) to 1.8 billion shares.

The group said it plans to use the placement proceeds to invest in its new 62.5 million yuan (S$12.7 million) build-operate-transfer (BOT) project in Jinghai District, Tianjin City, as well as to invest in other large-scale environmental related projects, especially BOT projects.

It also intends to invest in "synergistic companies" or companies with environmental technologies complementary to the group's business.

The proposed placement will be procured on a best-effort basis and is not underwritten by LET's placement agent, Stirling Coleman Capital. It will be undertaken by way of an exempt offering in Singapore.

LET shares closed up 0.3 Singapore cent to S$0.182 on Friday.