Aeroflot could place up to 69% of increased capital in new shares at 34.29 rubles/share

MOSCOW. May 4 (Interfax) - The Aeroflot board of directors has approved a secondary offering of up to 5,424,308,073 ordinary shares with par value of 1 ruble each, the company said in a statement following a meeting of the board.

The shares will be placed via open subscription at a price of 34.29 rubles/share, including the exercise of preemptive rights. Aeroflot will raise around 186 billion rubles if it sells all the new shares at that price.

The board has recommended that shareholders approve the decisions. An extraordinary meeting of shareholders will take place in absentia on June 3. The register for participating in the meeting closes on May 11.

Aeroflot's charter capital currently consists of 2,444,535,448 ordinary shares. This could increase 3.2-fold through issue, and the new shares could constitute 69% of increased charter capital.

Aeroflot closed at 31.14 rubles per share on the Moscow Exchange on April 29.

An Interfax source had previously said that the Russian government could allocate around 107 billion rubles from the NWF for these purposes. A measure was under consideration for supporting the Aeroflot group amid sanctions, the source explained. Additional shares were planned to be placed via public offering, though the government's current 57.34% stake in Aeroflot must not be diluted because of the additional issue.

Aeroflot's previous so-called anti-crisis SPO was held in the autumn of 2020, with shares placed at 60 rubles per share, and 80 billion rubles overall attracted. The Russian government at the time used funds from the NWF in order to buy 50 billion rubles worth of shares. The goal of the SPO, according to Aeroflot, was to stabilize the company's activities amid the transportation crisis owing to Covid-19.