Playtech to raise £100m through placing

Playtech, a gaming software developer, is to raise £100m through the placing of more than 46.5m shares.

The funds generated from the shares, which are priced at 215p per share, will be used to finance acquisition opportunities and investments in new joint venture projects.

The company is currently looking to make a number of bolt-on acquisitions, costing around £40m.

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The placing price represents a 2.5% discount to the closing middle market price of shares on 22 November. The shares, which represent 19% of the company's issue share capital, have been placed with Brickington, the company's largest shareholder, and "certain institutional shareholders", of which 27,756,041 may be available for placing to institutional shareholders via claw-back, dependent on demand, the firm said.

If shareholders do not subscribe for the shares, Brickington will increase its stake in the company from 40.3% to a maximum of 49.9%.

Mor Weizer, chief executive officer, said: "As part of this exercise, the board has re-confirmed its commitment to move to the main market and announced a revised dividend policy."

Henceforth, the company intends to pay out up to 40% of its retained earnings in dividends, with the final dividend being around twice that of the interim dividend.

Therefore, the directors envisage the company will recommend a dividend that will combine the interim and final dividend for the year to December 2011 in March 2012 at the 40% pay-out level, the company statement said.

"Trading in Q4 [fourth quarter] has continued to be in line with the strong trading reported in the company's Q3 KPIs [key performance indicators] on 9 November 2011. Daily average revenues have continued at 5% ahead of the average level in Q3 2011," the company disclosed.

The share price fell 0.57% to 219.25p by 12:52.

NR