The Tui travel group wants to quickly further reduce the scope of its Corona state aid. On Wednesday night, the company raised 425 million euros in fresh money with a capital increase. It is the third capital increase since January 2021. Tui announced that 162.3 million new shares had been placed at a price of EUR 2.62. One of the two silent participations of the State Economic Stabilization Fund (WSF) with a volume of 671 million euros is now to be repaid with the proceeds and available cash.
When a company raises capital, it issues new shares. This requires the permission of its previous shareholders. Tui had already obtained this at the general meeting in February with a reserve resolution. In order to prevent their company shares from being diluted, shareholders usually have subscription rights. This means that they may preferentially buy a share of the fresh securities that corresponds to their share of the share capital. Alternatively, shareholders can also sell their subscription rights on the stock exchange.
Tui’s most important investor cannot keep up
Observers had previously wondered how Tui would deal with the fact that the major Russian investor Alexei Mordashov currently has no way of going along with a capital increase. He owns a good 30 percent of the company. At the end of February he ended up on the EU’s sanctions list and his block of shares is currently blocked.
The travel group has found a way to circumvent this problem. “Because the capital increase in this case does not exceed ten percent of the share capital, Tui can exclude the subscription right for its existing shareholders,” explains Josef Gemmeke, who represents the interests of Tui shareholders as spokesman for the protective association of investors. Even if investors do not normally like reserve resolutions, nor are they enthusiastic when their subscription rights are denied, Gemmeke sees the step as positive in this case: “Tui urgently needs fresh capital,” says the shareholder representative. “Despite the dilution problem, it is a good signal that the group has received money on the capital market.” According to Tui, the new shares were only offered for sale to institutional investors.
In the corona pandemic, the German state saved the company from insolvency with a total of 4.3 billion euros in financial aid. In addition to the repayment of the silent participation, the credit line of the state bank KfW is now to be reduced by EUR 336 million to EUR 2.1 billion. In addition, there is another silent participation of the WSF for 420 million euros and a bond with warrants for 59 million euros.