Air New Zealand is pleased to announce that its rights offer period has ended and it has commenced the next step of undertaking a bookbuild for shares not taken up today.
The Rights Offer is still expected to complete on Monday, May 9, 2022.
Air New Zealand Chair Dame Therese Walsh says the Rights Offer take up period closed on May 2, 2022, and received strong support from eligible shareholders, with approximately 88 per cent of the New Shares taken up. Applications were received for a further NZ$71 million in oversubscriptions from existing shareholders applying for more shares than their allocation.
"We're very pleased with the level of take up. We thank our shareholders for their support so far, including the Crown which will maintain a majority shareholding of 51 per cent. The next step is to undertake a bookbuild of approximately 274 million shares which were either not taken up by eligible shareholders under the Rights Offer or were those which related to ineligible shareholders."
The airline has applied for a trading halt which will commence prior to market open tomorrow in order to undertake the bookbuild process. Further details on the bookbuild process are explained in the Offer Document.
Air New Zealand chief executive officer Greg Foran says the airline continues to see encouraging signs in recent passenger booking activity on short haul and international services as a result of New Zealand’s border reopening.
"If these signs continue through to the end of FY22, and there are no additional adverse impacts on the business, Air New Zealand’s losses before significant items and taxation for FY22 could be better than currently expected," says Greg.
"However, the macro-economic environment remains uncertain as a result of the disruption caused by the impact of Omicron and other Covid-19 variants, and the current conflict in Ukraine. Continued volatility in jet fuel prices is also a risk to any business."
