Asia Aviation (AAV), the holding company of Malaysia-based Thai AirAsia, expects to raise Bt4.5 billion from the sale of 1.212 billion shares in its initial public offering (IPO). The IPO price has been set at Bt3.7. Of the total offering, 800 million shares have been sold to institutional investors and the remainder will be sold to retail investors from tomorrow until Friday.
Thanachart Securities and CIMB Securities (Thailand) are co-underwriters. Tassapon Bijleveld, chief executive officer of Asia Aviation, said yesterday that the IPO price of Bt3.70 per share was appropriate. The issue among institutional investors locally and overseas was 11 times oversubscribed.
The company will use a part of the IPO proceeds to purchase Thai AirAsia’s newly issued shares to increase capital.
AAV will raise its stake in Thai AirAsia to 55 per cent from 51 per cent currently. AirAsia Investment (AAI), another major shareholder of Thai AirAsia, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Air Asia Berhad, will reduce its shareholding to 45 per cent from 49 per cent. The IPO shares represent 25 per cent of the paid-up capital of Bt410 million. After the IPO, the paid-up capital will be Bt485 million.
Tassapon said that the rest of funds from the IPO would be used to buy new aircraft, as the company targets expanding Thai AirAsia’s fleet to 48 planes over the next five years.
Thai AirAsia currently operates a fleet of 24 Airbus A320s and covers 28 destinations in eight countries. This year it will purchase three new aircraft. Tassapon said that the airline projected the number of passengers to reach 8 million this year, up from 7.2 million passengers last year, and the cabin factor is expected to rise to 81-82 per cent from 80 per cent last year.
Thai AirAsia had a net profit of Bt627 million in the first quarter, while revenue this year is expected to grow to Bt20 billion from Bt16 billion in 2011, Tassapon said.