An Icelandic Salmon farm. A share placement by the SalMar subsidiary has attracted strong interest. Photo: Icelandic Salmon (Arnarlax).

Icelandic Salmon ups share offer after strong interest from investors

The board of Iceland’s biggest salmon farmer, Icelandic Salmon AS (formerly Arnarlax) has increased the size of a share offering to institutional investors after the original private placement yesterday attracted huge interest.

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In a statement from the company’s majority owner, Norwegian salmon farmer SalMar, Icelandic Salmon’s directors said the offer was multiple times oversubscribed, and as such they had decided to increase the size of the primary offering in the placement from approximately NOK 432 million to approximately NOK 500 million.

“Accordingly, following this upsizing, the Private Placement consists of an offer of up to 5,629,344 shares in total, consisting of (i) a primary offering of up to 4,347,826 new shares in Icelandic Salmon to raise gross proceeds of up to approximately NOK 500 million and (ii) a secondary offering of up to 1,281,518 existing shares from certain selling shareholders, equivalent to proceeds of up to approximately NOK 147 million,” stated SalMar, which also has interests in Scotland through its co-ownership of Scottish Sea Farms.

Funding growth

“Icelandic Salmon intends to use the net proceeds from the primary offering of the private placement to fund growth and develop Icelandic Salmon’s value chain within existing licence portfolio, including investment in the expansion of smolt capacity, upgrade processing facility (Bíldudalur), farming equipment, branding initiatives and biomass build-up.”

The extra NOK 68m raised by the increased primary offer lifts the amount Icelandic Salmon will raise to NOK 647m (£54.3m).

The bookbuilding period in the private placement will close today, 14 October 2020, at 16:30 hours (CEST), subject to any decision to shorten or extend the bookbuilding period.