Londiwe Buthelezi
After a year of anticipation, intermediary financial services provider PSG Konsult has finally confirmed that its debut on the JSE’s main board would take place next week.
The JSE approved the listing of more than 1.2 billion PSG Konsult ordinary shares as PSG KST late last week.
The company, which offers stock broking, portfolio management and financial planning services, announced last year that it wanted to “play on the forefront” to raise its profile.
Shares in PSG Konsult have traded over the counter since 2005 and the company’s share price has grown from 40c to R7.45 a share on the last day of trading on Friday, May 30.
The over-the-counter platform is similar to a stock exchange market with the only difference being the actual trading process.
In PSG Konsult’s case, a phone call to the company’s trading desk would equip prospective investors with current bids, trading volumes, share price and other related information. Its trading history has always been displayed on its website and its financial results publicised.
“We’ve operated very close to a listed environment so there isn’t going to be much adjustment. The decision to list was made to facilitate liquidity because institutional investors and other investors like to buy listed shares,” chief financial officer Mike Smith said.
All the shares that the company would list have already been issued to 2 200 existing shareholders. Its holding company, the PSG Group, owns about 790 million of them, or 63 percent of the issued capital. The remainder are owned by the firm’s current and previous staff and management.
Smith said the listing would enable these shareholders to sell their shares to the general public.
PSG Konsult had indicated when it initially announced its intention to list on the JSE that it would not issue new shares as it was only listing to build a track record and not to raise capital. It would list as introduction to the market.
Smith said even though issuing shares to raise capital was an option, it was not one that PSG Konsult was looking to make use of any time soon.
“Our focus is top-line revenue growth. We are not looking at any acquisition or physical expansion at this stage so [raising capital] wasn’t an option we created for the short term,” he said.
PSG Konsult has been a subsidiary of the PSG Group for 16 years. At the end of its financial year in February, it had about R112 billion of funds under management and approximately R235bn of funds under administration.
When PSG Group launched a bookbuild offering last week, it said PSG Konsult and Capitec were the two well capitalised subsidiaries in the group.
The PSG Group had aimed to raise R1bn through the bookbuild and it received bids totalling R1.35bn when it closed the offering.
The company said on Friday it had accepted bids to the value of R920 million and would issue 9.7 million shares at R95 each. The proceeds will be used to support growth opportunities pursued by Curro Holdings, Zeder Investments and PSG Private Equity.
PSG Group fell 1.42 percent to close at R97.50 yesterday.