Fees associated with an IPO were expected to be about 8 percent, but they could be reduced to 2 percent if a “best efforts” placement was selected rather than a guaranteed underwriting Public trading of the stock would have implication for the shares held by top management and Sr.Este wanted to see the issue open at a price higher than the $9.00 that managers had most recently paid for their shares of Rosario Acero S.A. For this reason, he had concluded that the size of the issue would have to be determined after a market value had been placed on the company.
The IPO market had recovered modestly since the Mexican peso crash of November 1994. By March 1997, the stock market had rebounded from the “tequila effect” of the peso crash. The Merval index had risen over the previous three years, suggesting a growing optimism among equity in investors in Argentina. The market for IPOs was following this same recovery route, although the volume of IPOs was still relatively light.
The success of IPOs in recent months had depended a great deal on the quality of the offering ; issues in more stable and mature industries that appealed to the knowledgeable investors were faring better than media and communications issues. A number of the recent IPOs involved privatizations of state-owned enterprises. Other IPOs were spin-offs from larger industrial groups seeking to rationalize their operations. One recent example was a spin-off a subsidiary involved in a commodity fertilizer business that brought $22 a share on 11 million shares, surpassing expectations of 17 to $20 a share set for the issue prior to the November crash. In contrast was a retailer’s first issue that had been planned for the end of November 1996. The company had expected to issue $9 million in equity, but it was forced to look elsewhere for funds when it could not locate another underwriter after its first banker withdrew.
Pablo Este had recently, entertained the idea of selling Rosario Acero to another concern, although no specific price had been estimated for company at that time. This option could be considered in more detail, this time at means of obtaining funds or issuing stock to the public.
To value Rosario Acero S.A., Sr. Este had forecasted the financial performance of the firm under either financing option, the debt-and-warrants issue (see Exhibits 9, 10 and 11). Also, he obtained average valuation multiples for minimills from a recent investment report; these indicated an average equity value of 1.5 times book value, 21 times 1996earnings, and 18 times estimated 1997 earnings. Sr. Este had also gathered information on several publicly held steel producers in Mercosur that were somewhat similar to Rosario Acero S.A. This information is contained in Exhibit 12. He wondered whether to simply average the results of all the peers given in that exhibit or to exclude any; Picasso Acero, for instance, had experienced a turbulent year due to a strike and vandalism at its plant. Based on his own experience with leveraged buyouts, sr. Este believed that a potential LBO purchaser might place a value on the company’s equity by using a multiple of 4 times EBIT and then subtracting total debt.
Interest rates over the past few years are provided in Exhibits 13 and 14. Research by Raul Martinez revealed that economists and financial institution were forecasting annual rates of inflation between 2.5 and 4.0 percent, and real GNP growth at 1.5 to 6.0 percent.
Pablo Este was 66 years old and the patriarch of a large extended family. While he had no intention of retiring from Rosario’s board of directors soon, he was concerned about the