Excelsior Capital sold some of its stake in South Korea’s largest cable operator CJ HelloVision in a block trade totaling up to $50 million, according to a term sheet.
Private equity firm Excelsior held 8.1 million shares in the company at the time of the accelerated secondary offering late on Thursday.
It traded 3 million shares, or 37% of its stake in the company, at 17,600 won ($16.41), a 4.1% discount to the February 19 close of 18,350 won, a person close to the deal told FinanceAsia. It was initially priced between 17,550 and 18,000 won with a 90-day lockup.
After dropping to 18,250 won Thursday morning, shares peaked at 18,550 won before settling at 18,450 won. Year-to-date, HelloVision shares are down 4%.
Demand was solid among South Korean long-only institutional investors Thursday evening, the person said, adding that international hedge funds also bought some shares.
"It was mainly Korean long-only investors and some hedge funds. They were represented fairly equally but allocations were skewed towards domestic investors looking to gain exposure," the person said. "It was a little bit off the low end of the range. The 4.1% discount isn't that high [especially considering] it went public in 2012."
Domestic investors like the TMT story, he said, noting that HelloVision shares in particular have performed well. Shares are up 18% since its November 2012 listing.
HelloVision raised $267 million in its initial public offering finalised in November 2012. Despite cutting the number of shares on offer by 3% to about 18.33 million at the time, the deal at the time was the largest IPO in South Korea in almost 18 months.
In addition to its cable TV business, CJ HelloVision provides high-speed internet and internet telephone services. When the company went public, it had roughly 3.2 million cable-TV subscribers and provided high-speed internet access and internet telephone services to 690,000 and 580,000 subscribers, respectively.
Excelsior was invested in HelloVision before it went public, FinanceAsia understands.
The company was founded in 1995 as a subsidiary of KT Corp under the name Korea Telecom Cable Television, and was acquired by the CJ Group in 1999. It changed its name to CJ HelloVision in 2009.
UBS acted as the sole bookrunner for the accelerated secondary offering.
