Michael Kors Secondary Share Offering Assisted by Guidance

Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: KORS) is cashing in on the huge gains in its share price. At least its insiders and backers are. The luxury apparel retailer has priced a previously announced secondary offering of 23,000,000 ordinary shares at a price of $53.00 per share. All shares are being sold by existing holders. What is keeping the impact from being too bad here is the previously announced higher guidance for the second quarter and for the fiscal year.

The joint book-runners are Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Securities and Goldman Sachs. Co-managers are listed as Robert W. Baird & Co., Jefferies & Company, Nomura Securities and Piper Jaffray & Co. Two firms also listed as underwriters after the co-managers are Lebenthal & Co. and Telsey Advisory Group. In addition, the selling shareholders have granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 3,450,000 ordinary shares.

As far as how this deal sizes up, Michael Kors shares closed at $54.40 on Monday and the 52-week range is $23.51 to $57.35. The 23 million shares also compares to an average daily volume of about 3.2 million shares and the short interest was roughly 4.24 million shares at the end of August.

JON C. OGG