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Brait SE, a South African investment holding company partly owned by South African billionaire businessman Christo Wiese, is planning to list Premier, its South African food business, which has an unrealized carrying value of R9.27 billion ($582 million) as of March 31.
The IPO of the leading food manufacturer, which operates under the umbrella of Brait SE, will be the first on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange since Andries van Rensburg’s food company, Libstar Holdings, was listed in 2018.
Ethos, which has been preparing for the planned listing of the food maker with the South African investment holding for more than six months, revealed that the listing will take place as soon as more favorable stock market conditions permit.
“We’ve got our hand above the buzzer,” Peter Hayward-Butt, a partner at Ethos Private Equity, said, “and we could push at any time we want and when market conditions are favorable.”
“You’ll never time it to perfection, but if market conditions in the next month, two months or six months are there, we can proceed,” he added.
Their caution as regards the planned listing process can be attributed to conditions such as, but not limited to, the global market listing boom last year, which has given way to a period of severe market volatility, as well as heightened risks and uncertainty on equities and other risky assets fueled by the war in Ukraine and a flurry of interest rate hikes by central banks around the world.
Hayward-Butt stated that a portion of the funds that Brait raises from selling its stake in Premier will be used to offset its maturing credit facility.
According to recently released data, Premier’s revenue increased by 16 percent, from R12.5 billion ($784 million) in 2021 to R14.5 billion ($909.4 million) at the end of its fiscal year in 2022, while its unrealized carrying value increased from R7.6 billion ($476.7 million) to R9.27 billion ($582 million).
