Webtoon Entertainment’s IPO priced at the top of its indicated range earlier this week, issuing 15 million shares at $21 a share, yielding gross proceeds of $315 million. The company receives another approximately $50 million from a private placement of additional shares to parent company Naver. In NASDAQ trading, the stock rose above the initial offering price, this morning priced at about $24 a share.
Finance
Booktopia Searches for Funding in Order to Continue As a Going Concern
On Friday, Australian bookseller Booktopia requested an extension of the voluntary suspension of their securities, making clearer how dire their financial situation has become as the company seeks funding in order to continue operating. Last week, the company suspended trading shares pending an announcement about the outcome of its strategic review, which has been delayed in multiple press releases and is now expected to be made on June 28. In a letter to the Australian Stock Exchange, the company noted that it has had ongoing “liquidity challenges” and is looking for funding “both to meet redundancy costs and to provide […]
Booktopia Suspends Trading of Its Shares
Struggling Australian online bookseller Booktopia looks to have reached a troubling new stage. Late last week they suspended trading of the company’s stock — which is worth only five cents a share — pending an announcement. But the follow-up announcement earlier this week simply said that trading in their shares would remain suspended, “pending the release of an announcement regarding further outcomes from the previously announced strategic review including its progress in seeking additional funding.” Co-founder, board member and once-again executive Tony Nash told The Guardian Australia, “We’re in motion at the moment, so [an announcement] will be probably more […]
B&N to Purchase Tattered Cover for $1.83 Million
As was rumored last week, Barnes & Noble will buy Tattered Cover bookstore for $1,833,402 in cash, in an offer accepted by Tattered Cover’s owner Bended Page LLC Monday evening. The deal must be approved by bankruptcy court before it is final, and a decision is slated to be made before July 31. B&N will acquire Tattered Cover’s inventory and five locations, which will continue to operate under the Tattered Cover Book Store name. Per the filing with the bankruptcy court, BN “anticipates offering employment to substantially all of Tattered Cover’s current employees,” approximately 70 people, “to continue its events […]
Barnes & Noble Education Finalizes Last Piece of Recapitalization
BNED has completed their refinancing deal and announced that they will execute the planned 1-for-100 reverse stock split at the end of the day Tuesday, June 11. The move will give the company roughly 26.2 million shares outstanding, and will lift the stock price to an acceptable level to prevent delisting from the New York Stock Exchange. (As of Tuesday morning the stock trades for around 10 cents a share. That would equate to $10 a share after the reverse split.) Immersion Corporation, their new primary shareholder, should have something on the order of a 42 percent stake in the […]
Barnes & Noble Education Completes Share Offer
The company formally completed their “rights offering,” with existing shareholders buying about 642 million of the 900 million shares of stock offered, at 5 cents a share. That leaves the “backstop” buyers — primarily Immersion Corporation/Toro 18, plus Outerbridge Capital Management and the Selz Family 2011 Trust — on the hook for only $12.9 million to buy up the remaining shares. The company expects to issue the new shares on June 10. Separately, Greenhaven Capital, which had built a 9.9 percent position in the company and flirted with putting together a competing buyout offer, took advantage of the weird interest […]