Fevertree Buyers Scramble for Co-Founder's Discounted Shares
Fevertree Buyers Scramble for Co-Founder's Discounted Shares
(Bloomberg) -- Fevertree Drinks Plc’s monumental gains since its 2014 debut have made the stock a prized asset, so a discounted offering had investors scrambling to snap it up.
Such was the demand from institutions when co-founder Charles Rolls sought to sell part of his stake in the U.K. premium tonic maker that the size of the sale was doubled to 3 million shares. Rolls, Fevertree’s non-executive deputy chairman, netted 82.5 million pounds ($116 million) by selling the stock at 2,750 pence a share -- 7 percent less than Thursday’s closing price.
Investors are betting that Fevertree’s growth will continue as it seeks to expand in the U.S. and as consumers spend money on its fancy tonics and lemonade. Although the stock fell as much as 6.5 percent to 2,766 pence on Friday following the sale, it has risen more than 20-fold since the company went public in 2014.
It’s not the first time that Rolls has reduced his stake. He sold 4.5 million shares at 1,625 pence each in May 2017.
His remaining stake of about 9.93 million shares is equivalent to about an 8.6 percent stake, which is subject to a three-month lockup agreement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Pham in London at lpham14@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Celeste Perri at cperri@bloomberg.net, Paul Jarvis
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