Colombian supermarket chain Almacenes Exito S.A. announced Tuesday its shares were oversubscribed by 172% in its share offering which ended September 23, according to a company press release.
The share sale raised $1.33 billion, which Exito – which means “success” in Spanish – plans to spend on expansion within Colombia and commence its international operations.
Exito, Colombia’s biggest publicly traded retailer, received requests for more than 196 million shares but only 114, 270,684 were available in the share offering which began September 5.
“Receiving demand for 82 million more shares than what we had available shows the trust that investors have in our organization. For us, the result is a true demonstration of the interest that exists for our company, taking into account that right now there is an adverse economic climate and these weeks were difficult for Latin American markets,” said Gonzalo Restrepo Lopez, president of Grupo Exito.
Almacenes Exito S.A. now has 10,100 new shareholders. The French company Casino is the majority shareholder of Almacenes Exito S.A. with 54.8% of the company.