Casinos & Hotels
500.Com Punishing Shareholders, Offering Into Lockup Expiration
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500.com Ltd. (NYSE: WBAI) is supposed to be the lottery stock investment for China. It turns out that it has been a losing ticket in March, falling from over $54 earlier in the month to around $36. A secondary offering and convertible senior notes offering is only adding insult to injury.
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Two SEC filings from Wednesday evening are weighing on the ADRs. 500.com filed registration statements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regarding two issues:
- A proposed underwritten public offering by the company and certain shareholders of the its ADRs (up to $360 million worth), each representing 10 Class A ordinary shares
- A proposed underwritten public offering by the company of its convertible senior notes
Deutsche Bank Securities, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley are leading the proposed offering of the ADSs. Deutsche Bank Securities is acting as the representative of the underwriters of the proposed offering of the notes. As far as the timing, the prospectus says:
In connection with the above proposed offerings, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., the sole bookrunning manager in the Company’s initial public offering of 66,539,000 ADSs representing the Company’s ordinary shares, are releasing the lock-up restrictions with respect to up to 49,627,409 Class B ordinary shares of the Company held by two directors of the Company. The release will take effect on or about April 8, 2014, and the ADSs representing such ordinary shares may be sold on or after such date.
500.com’s 2013 results in dollars did show impressive growth for the past year. In 2013, revenues rose more than 51% to RMB259.5 million ($42.9 million), and its operating profit was up about 184% to RMB59.9 million ($9.9 million). The company further said that its non-GAAP net income attributable to ordinary shareholders (ex-items) was up 86% to RMB55.6 million ($9.2 million).
As far as what $360 million means on a relative basis, the market cap is just under $1.2 billion.
500.com ADRs were down 3.5% at $36.49 after about 30 minutes of trading on Thursday, and its post-IPO trading range has been $18.14 to $54.00.
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