MADRID (Reuters) -Spanish power utility Naturgy said on Tuesday it sold about 5.5% of its shares through an accelerated bookbuilding and a bilateral sale as part of its plan to increase its free float and return to the main stock market indexes.
The company said it raised 500 million euros ($577.30 million) selling 2% of its shares at 25.90 euros through an accelerated bookbuilding, opened on Monday.
Morgan Stanley advised the bookbuilding.
In a separate operation, Naturgy agreed to sell 3.5% of its shares to an unidentified “international financial entity”, the company said without disclosing the price per share.
The operations would increase Naturgy’s free float – or shares available to the public for trading – to 15%, which the company has previously said should be enough to achieve its goal of returning to the main indexes.
Naturgy in February said it would buy back almost 2.5 billion euros of its own shares at 26.5 euros per share, or about 9.08% of its equity, and then resell these shares in the market. Its four main shareholders backed the plan and agreed to reduce their stakes.
With these two sales, the company reduced the shares it holds to 4.5% down from 9.99%.
($1 = 0.8661 euros)
(Reporting by Inti Landauro)
