Dow Shoring Up Capital (DOW)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) has commenced a public offering of common stock to shore up its balance sheet after closing its recent huge merger (acquisition) with Rohm & Haas.   It will raise approximately $1.625 billion in the sale.  Roughly $1 billion of the proceeds will be through shares offered by the company itself and roughly $625 million will be through shares offered by accounts and funds managed by Paulson & Co. and trusts created by members of the Haas Family.  This might not be the only offering to raise capital.

Interestingly enough, these investors have agreed to sell a portion of their shares of Dow’s Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series B to Dow at par plus accrued dividends for shares of common stock which are subsequently being sold in the offering.

Morgan Stanley, Citi, Merrill Lynch, and HSBC Securities are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering.  The holders have granted a 15% of the total number of shares offered to cover over-allotments.  This offering is also part of an existing shelf registration statement.

Dow said that it intends to use the $1 billion of proceeds to repay a portion of its $9.2 billion term loan agreement borrowings, which were used to pay for a portion of the buyout of Rohm & Haas.

As noted, this might not be the last offering.  The press release noted that that the company is also considering a potential offering of senior unsecured notes in a registered public offering, but none of the offerings would be contingent upon each other.

Shares closed down marginally at $16.33 today with a $15 billion market cap, and shares are indicated down 3.5% at $15.75 in the after-hours session.  The 52-week trading range is $5.89 to $43.43.

Jon C. Ogg

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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