SJM executives to raise as much as us$ 57 million in stock sale

CEO Ambrose So and COO Ng Chi Sing are offering 20 million shares at us$ 2,76 to us$ 2.83 each, a discount of 2.2 % to 4.4 % to Wednesday’s close, terms for the deal show. Deutsche Bank is joint book runner, according to the term sheet. 

SJM surged 4.9 % Wednesday to close at us$ 2.89, the highest level since the 2008 initial public offering, after receiving the Macau government’s final approval to develop its first casino in the Chinese city’s Cotai area, the Asian equivalent of the Las Vegas Strip. 

The casino company got official approval for a resort on the 70,468-square-meter site, according to a gazette published by the Macau government yesterday. It has agreed to pay the government us$ 269 million. 

SJM, which currently runs 20 out of 35 casinos in Macau and has none on the Cotai strip, first won preliminary approval for the land grant in October. It has said it plans to develop as much as 521,435 square meters of total floor area on the site, including a five-star hotel and a casino resort. Macau is granting the land on a renewable 25-year lease, according to yesterday’s gazette. 

SJM has informed Macau that it intends to build and operate a gambling resort containing about 700 gaming tables, 1,000 slot machines and about 2,000 hotel rooms on the land, the company said in a stock exchange statement. 

SJM is the last company among Macau’s six casino operators to receive an approval to develop a casino resort in the Cotai area. MGM China’s us$ 2.6 billion Cotai resort broke ground in February and is set to open by mid-2016.