Fincantieri prices IPO at bottom of range

The company, which is wholly owned by Italian state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti through its Fintecna unit, is offering 450m shares for a total value of €351m ($479m), excluding the overallotment option and gross of fees and expenses, it said in a statement.

Fincantieri initially planned to offer up to a maximum of 704m shares, made up of 600m from a capital increase and the remainder sold by Fintecna, at a price range of between €0.78 and €1.00 per share. Fintecna will no longer sell any shares, but will offer 50m shares via the over-allotment option.

Fincantieri said the offer would give it an initial market capitalisation of €1.32bn.

The company will make use of a claw-back option to change the allocation of shares between institutional and retail investors.

Fincantieri will be listed on the Italian stock exchange starting July 3. Fincantieri launched the IPO to raise cash for projects in the pipeline and to fund potential acquisitions.

Banca IMI, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and UniCredit are acting as global coordinators.

The joint bookrunners are BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Mediobanca.

Headquartered in Trieste, the Fincantieri Group has more than 20,000 employees, of whom 7,700 in Italy, and 21 shipyards in four continents. In 2013, the Group acquired VARD, a company listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange that builds offshore support vessels for oil and gas extraction and production. Currently, Fincantieri has 12 cruise ships firmed through to 2018.