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WAM Leaders resurrects raising, starts with $100m placement

Sarah Thompson, Kanika Sood and Emma Rapaport

Apr 12, 2023 – 9.30am

Wilson Asset Management’s strong-performing large cap LIC, WAM Leaders, is back in front of investors just three weeks after it parked a $731.5 million cash call amid market volatility triggered by the banking crisis.

Matthew Haupt, lead portfolio manager for the WAM Leaders portfolio. Geoff Wilson is the chairman.

Terms sent to potential backers on Wednesday morning said WAM Leaders would raise $100 million plus oversubscriptions via a placement and chase it up with a share purchase plan whose size wasn’t disclosed.

The placement’s priced at $1.48 a share, which is a 6.9 per cent discount to the last traded price and at par with the LIC’s March-end net tangible asset backing of $1.475 a share. (WAM Leaders posts its NTA once a month).

There’s also a share purchase plan for retail investors, which would be offered at either the March-end NTA or the five-date volume weighted average price at SPP date (whichever is lower) – clearly a mechanism to manage volatility which flattened WAM Leaders’ earlier raising.

WAM’s broker syndicate would shut the placement books at midday on Thursday. The SPP’s size wouldn’t be decided until after the placement.

It’s good timing for WAM Leaders to head out again from a pricing perspective, but it would be interesting to see if it gets the maximum permissible $731.5 million it had originally hoped for.

The rebooted raise’s $1.48-a-share offer price is the same as the LIC’s original March 6 offer. However, it is now a 6.9 per cent discount to the last close (slightly better than the 5.1 per cent previously) while still being at par with the month end NTA.

On the deal size front, it’s gone from chasing the maximum permissible $243.8 million in the placement to $100 million plus oversubscriptions now. And it remains to be seen how from the original $487.7 million the SPP lands this time around.

Taylor Collison was the lead manager alongside Morgans, Ord Minnett, Canaccord Genuity, Shaw and Partners and Bell Potter.

The LIC has returned 19.4 per cent over the three years ending February, which is a solid 11.5 per cent higher than the S&P/ASX 200 Accumulation Index.