Onexim's stake in Uralkali falls to 20% after buyback; free float to 23%
MOSCOW. June 15 (Interfax) - Onexim's stake in Uralkali fell to 20% following the potash miner's buyback, Uralkali said in materials on its website.
The buyback reduced Uralkali's free float to 23%.
UralChem and China's CIC retained their stakes in the company, at 19.99% and 12.5% respectively. Uralkali's treasury stock increased to 24.16%. The proportion of Uralkali traded as GDR was 19.5% as of June.
Uralkali on April 23 announced a buyback program for shares and GDR totalling up to $1.5 billion. Shareholders tendered shares and GDR equivalent to 11.89% of Uralkali charter capital in the buyback.
Earlier on Thursday, Uralkali said that it bought back 11.56% of its stock in the buyback offer. Considering that the purchase price for tendered securities was $3.20 per share and $16 per GDR, the company spent $1.09 billion in the buyback, of which more than $650 million went to Onexim.
Uralkali's charter capital is split into 2,936,015,891 shares with par value of 0.50 rubles. After the cancellation of the treasury stake, charter capital will decrease to 2,226,674,452 shares. Therefore, after the cancellation of the treasury shares, Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim Group and UralChem will each own 26.4% of Uralkali, and China's CIC will hold 16.5%. The free float will be 30.3%.
Analysts said earlier that the decrease of Uralkali's free float following the buyback and before the cancellation of the treasury shares could lead to the reduction of Uralkali's weight in the MSCI Russia Index.
