As part of its previously disclosed plan to divest a significant portion of its building products business in North America and the United Kingdom, HeidelbergCement announced that its subsidiary, Hanson Building Products Ltd., filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Sept. 15 for a potential initial public offering (IPO) of its ordinary shares. According to Reuters, HeidelbergCement has been aiming to offload its building products business this year so it may be better positioned to buy cement assets that Lafarge SA and Holcim Ltd. must sell when they merge into LafargeHolcim.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank Securities were underwriting the IPO, Hanson told the SEC in a preliminary prospectus. The filing included a nominal fundraising target of about $100 million, although it did not reveal how many shares the company planned to sell or their expected price. The company intends to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange but did not specify a symbol. HeidelbergCement BP Ltd., the wholly-owned subsidiary of the German cement manufacturer, is selling all the shares in the offering; Hanson Building Products will not receive any proceeds from the offering.
Hanson Building Products reported a net income of $14.9 million for the six months ended June, compared with a loss of $252.7 million a year earlier. Net sales, however, dropped about 47 percent to $597.4 million.
