Life Healthcare shares in demand

Nearly all of the shares in Life Healthcare’s first rights offer have been snapped up, with shareholders requesting that more are made available.

Nearly all of the shares in Life Healthcare’s first rights offer have been snapped up, with shareholders requesting that more are made available.

When the rights offer, which was partially underwritten by Rand Merchant Bank and Absa Bank, closed at noon last Thursday, 97.6% of the 367,346,939 new Life Healthcare ordinary shares were subscribed at R24.50 per rights-offer share, the company said on Tuesday.

Life Healthcare Group strategy and investor relations executive Adam Pyle said the rights issue had been successfully completed in challenging market conditions.

The exercise also saw applications for additional shares, amounting to 19.9% of the offer. The company made 72,972,716 more shares available.

It said more shares would be allocated equitably in line with the JSE’s rules and taking cognisance of the number of ordinary shares held by applicants.

“The combination of shareholders following their rights and requests for extra shares resulted in an oversubscription of about 18% ” said Pyle.

The funds raised from the offer would enable the group to pay for its plans to expand outside of SA. Life Healthcare opened up the offer on March 23 in a bid to raise R9bn to fund the 2016 acquisition of Alliance Medical Group.

The share price gained 0.42% to R26.11 after the group released the outcome of the rights offer. The shares had been in decline for the past three weeks.