KKR Sells $209 Million Vietnam Stake After Stock Doubled

(Bloomberg) -- KKR & Co. raised about $209 million selling its stake in Vietnamese conglomerate Masan Group Corp., people with knowledge of the matter said, after its shares doubled since the private equity firm invested.

KKR sold 54.8 million Masan shares at 89,200 dong apiece, the midpoint of a marketed range, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. The price represents a 5 percent discount to Masan’s last close.

The shares were offered at 87,800 dong to 90,600 dong each, according to terms for the deal obtained by Bloomberg earlier. KKR’s offering was oversubscribed with strong demand from long-only funds and local investors, one of the people said. The top five investors who participated bought about 85 percent of the offering, the person said.

KKR said in April 2017 it was buying $100 million of Masan stock from Danish private equity firm PENM Partners. It also spent another $150 million for a stake in Masan’s meat unit, according to a statement at the time. Masan shares have risen 109 percent from KKR’s announcement of the investments’ completion through Thursday, compared with a 44 percent gain in the benchmark VN Index over the period.

A representative for KKR couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

--With assistance from Joyce Koh and Cathy Chan.

To contact the reporters on this story: Elffie Chew in Kuala Lumpur at echew16@bloomberg.net;Nguyen Kieu Giang in Hanoi at giang1@bloomberg.net;Fox Hu in Hong Kong at fhu7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Scent at bscent@bloomberg.net, ;Divya Balji at dbalji1@bloomberg.net, John Boudreau

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