Was the Golar LNG Secondary a Gift to Investors?

On Friday morning came the announcement that the pricing of its secondary offering of 27,826,087 shares of its common stock went off at a price to the public of $58.50 per share. The issue is that the stock closed at $60.34 on Thursday, and the stock was up at almost $63 in early Thursday trading before it was known that the deal was imminent.

Golar LNG is a midstream liquefied natural gas outfit that is in the transportation, regasification and liquefaction, and trading of LNG; it operates in Vessel Operations and Commodity Trading.

What stands out here is that the opening price was $57.81 on Friday morning, and then the lowest price of the day was $57.56. But that was then. Friday’s late afternoon trading up at $59.76 — a gain of more than $2 from the lows of the same morning and a gain of $1.25 higher than the secondary offering price.

The Golar LNG share sale was by its principal shareholder, World Shipholding Limited. All of the proceeds are going to the selling stake holder, and the group also granted the underwriters a 30-day overallotment option to purchase up to an additional 4,173,913 common shares at the same terms.

The offering came with a large underwriting group, which is not unusual considering that it was for was for over $1.6 billion in proceeds before considering any overallotment shares. The joint book-runners were BofA Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and a firm named RS Platou Markets. Co-managers in the syndicate were listed as Arctic Securities, BNP PARIBAS, DNB Markets, and Pareto Securities.

An SEC filing from Golar just this week showed that director and Vice Chairman, Tor Olav Troim, acquired 3.0 million shares in Golar from World Shipholding Limited in July 2014. This brought his total direct and indirect holding in Golar to 3.4 million shares representing a 3.6% interest. World Shipholding’s ownership following this transaction was listed by the company as being 33.8 million shares — representing a 36.2% interest.

Golar LNG’s market value is $5.6 billion, and its 52-week trading range is $33.07 to $67.76. The move may have all but cleaned up any overhang out there in potential share sales down the road. That being said, this also will bring on an entirely new mix of shareholders.