Premier Energy’s €140m IPO on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, confirming STJ’s position as #1 ECM advisor in Central and Eastern Europe
2024
STJ Advisors is delighted to announce that on 16th May 2024 Premier Energy PLC (“Premier Energy” or the “Company”) priced its EUR 140m IPO on the Bucharest Stock Exchange at RON 19.50 per share. Premier Energy is one of the fastest growing privately owned vertically integrated energy infrastructure companies in Southeastern Europe and one of the largest renewable energy players in Romania and the Republic of Moldova. Trading is expected to begin on 27th May 2024.
STJ advised Premier Energy on all aspects of the transaction, marking the second Romanian IPO on which STJ has advised in 10 months following the USD 2.1bn Hidroelectrica IPO in July 2023.
Transaction highlights:
■ Initial Public Offering of circa EUR 140m, assuming full exercise of the greenshoe, comprising EUR 97m of primary proceeds and EUR 43m of secondary shares provided by majority shareholder EMMA Capital with a market capitalisation upon listing of EUR 490m equivalent.
■ Books multiple times oversubscribed at the final pricing of RON 19.50 and throughout the range, with considerable scaling back of orders and numerous accounts zeroed.
■ High quality book with substantial Long Only support allowed extremely tight allocations with Hedge Fund orders a small minority of final allocations.
■ Anchor support from a diverse range of accounts including a Development Finance Institution, local pension funds and international sovereign wealth.
■ Strong support from local retail investors, with orders received from over 12,500 individual investors.
■ Following admission, Premier Energy will immediately be included in the BET index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange.
Key STJ value-add:
■ Building a bank syndicate to access all potential pockets of demand: This enabled a comprehensive marketing exercise with several rounds of Early Look Meetings, Deep Dive Sessions targeted at both regional and international investors, and an extensive Pre-Deal Investor Education exercise. Such a broad syndicate, with each JGC tasked with targeting international, pan-European and CEE investors respectively, was instrumental in contributing to the diverse final institutional allocations which were majority non-Romanian.
■ Creating an optimal equity story: Having produced an IPO Feasibility Study at the beginning of the engagement, the ongoing active involvement of STJ’s Strategic Research Advisory team in the optimisation of the equity story carried through to all investor marketing materials, the Analyst Presentation, and the management presentation to banks’ sales teams.
■ Bespoke investor targeting: STJ’s proprietary ATLAS database, with data from on over 12,000 institutional investors’ involvement in previous STJ projects, allowed management to make well-informed decisions with respect to investor targeting.
■ Optimising valuation: STJ played a crucial role in managing banks’ achievement of an optimal valuation for all stakeholders, with a reduced IPO discount and discount to peers and in-line with the objectives of the Company.
■ Advising on key structuring parameters: STJ provided recommendations around the sizing of the primary and secondary tranches, the setting of the price range, final offer price and allocations, taking into account Company and shareholders’ objectives and local demand dynamics.
■ Structuring a highly successful retail tranche: STJ was instrumental in structuring a successful retail tranche with an attractive 5% discount offered to retail investors in the first days of bookbuilding, which resulted in large price-insensitive demand coming soon after books opened, contributing to banks’ ability to release a covered message on the second day of bookbuilding and contributing to further momentum in the order book.
■ Providing continuous advice on all key IPO aspects since 2021: STJ has been working with the Company since 2021 and has provided ongoing advice to the Company throughout the process.
The IPO of Premier Energy confirms STJ’s position as #1 ECM advisor in Central and Eastern Europe having advised on USD 6bn equivalent of equity capital markets transactions for CEE issuers since 2020.
The IPO also confirms STJ’s position as the leading advisor on European utilities IPOs, adding to its recent track record including Hidroelectrica and Acciona Energia.
