Thailand’s Nok Air seeks to raise $73.5mn from shareholders

Nok Air is seeking to raise THB2.22 billion bahts (USD73.5 million) from existing shareholders through a new share issuance, the Thai low-cost carrier said in a stock market filing.

The Thai carrier’s Board of Directors proposed issuing 888,147,358 new shares nominally valued at THB1 (USD0.03) each. If the proposal is approved by an Extraordinary General Meeting on January 14, existing shareholders will be offered purchase rights to buy one new share per 3.5 existing shares. The purchase price has been set at THB2.5 (USD0.08) per share.

The offering period will run from February 3 to February 7, 2020.

Nok Air said it will allocate shares not taken up in the first round to any oversubscribing shareholders but it does not foresee allocating any shares to investors who are not shareholders at the moment.

Simultaneously, the Board of Directors proposed decreasing the number of shares in circulation by 99,030,527 shares which were not sold during previous equity increases. This will result in a decrease of the total number of shares, equivalent to the registered capital, to 3,309,019,273 prior to the new issuance planned for early February.

Nok Air is currently controlled by the Jurangkool family, with three of its family members controlling a combined 67.4% stake in the airline. Thai Airways International owns a 15.9% stake with the remainder held by small shareholders with less than 0.5% each.