Banking, finance, and taxes

Bicapital Updates Finances in Most Recent IPO Filing

Chris Lange

Published: December 17, 2015 11:05 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 3:58 pm

Bicapital has filed an amended Form F-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding its initial public offering (IPO). No terms were given in the filing, but the offering is valued at up to $345 million. The company intends to file on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol BICA.

Merrill Lynch and Citigroup are global coordinators and joint bookrunners for the offering, while JPMorgan is only a joint bookrunner.

This company is the largest financial services group in Guatemala, with a growing presence in other underpenetrated and fast-growing Central American countries. Through its subsidiaries, Bicapital provided a range of corporate and retail banking, insurance and other financial services to more than 1.7 million clients at the end of June 2015.

Bicapital was formed as a holding company in 2006, and its main subsidiary, Banco Industrial, was founded in 1967. The company believes that its businesses benefit from significant synergies as a result of being part of one financial group. It attributes its success primarily to its ability to penetrate high-margin market segments, exploit cross-selling opportunities and create strong relationships with the largest corporations in Central America.

In the filing, Bicapital described its finances as follows:

Since our formation as a holding company in 2006, we have built a track record of delivering sustained profitable growth. For instance, our profit for banking and insurance operations was US$473.6 million, US$536.1 million and US$566.8 million, respectively, for the year ended March 31, 2013, 2014 and 2015 and US$151.5 million for the three-month period ended June 30, 2015 …

As of September 30, 2015, we had total assets of US$13.1 billion, total net loans of US$7.4 billion, total deposits of US$8.0 billion, and total shareholders’ equity of US$1.1 billion. For the year ended March 31, 2015 and the six-month period ended September 30, 2015, respectively, our profit for the period was US$185.9 million and US$103.7 million, and for the year ended March 31, 2014 our profit for the period was US$181.2 million.

The company intends to use the proceeds from this offering to increase capital in its banking subsidiaries, mainly Banco Industrial, although Bicapital also said that it cannot predict with certainty all the particular uses of the proceeds from this offering.