International Breweries Plc has received approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise funds through the right issue of 161,172,395,100 to existing shareholders.
The company is issuing the shares to the shareholders at N3.65 per share effectively hoping to raise more than N588bn to save the company where over 1000 direct and indirect jobs are at stake.
“International Breweries PLC is pleased to notify its esteemed Shareholders, Stakeholders, Nigerian Exchange Limited and the general public, that the Company has obtained approval from the Securities Exchange Commission to offer to the shareholders the proposed Rights Issue of 161,172,395,100 Ordinary Shares of 2 Kobo each at N3.65 Per Share, on the basis of six new ordinary shares for every one existing ordinary share held,” the brewer said.
SEC approved the application list to open on May 21, 2024, and close on June 10, 2024
When a company sells shares through right issues, only existing shareholders can purchase additional new shares in the company.
In January this year, International Breweries released its financial statement for full year 2023 which showed that the company was facing a liquidity crisis and has been a serial loser.
An analysis by NewsNGR showed that the company recorded full year losses of N3.93bn in 2018, N36.16bn in 2019; N 18.5bn in 2020; N16.42bn in 2021; N21.6bn in 2022 and in 2023, the company lost N59.46bn.
In the first quarter of 2024, the company posted N60.39bn loss.
The company is facing liquidity crisis as its current assets of N380.3bn are far below its current liability of N727.69bn which implies that the company has a negative working capital, the first quarter 2024 financials revealed.
The developments led the brewer’s shareholders to approve the raising of emergency additional capital after posting losses since 2018.