Byggma nearly doubled its pre-tax earnings in the second quarter — and has now bought Norske Skog shares for more than 500 million

Status has been updated.

On Wednesday evening, it became known that main owner Oceanwood in Norske Skog will sell 11 million shares in the company, for more than 785 million.

On Thursday morning, it became clear that Byggma, which is controlled by Geir Drangsland, had bought 7.2 million shares in Norske Skog. This appears from the stock exchange announcement. Byggma is now the company’s major shareholder.

Looking at Norske Skog’s share price at the stock’s close on Wednesday, the value of 7.2 million shares is just under NOK 513 million.

This means Byggma now owns approximately 12 million shares in the company, which equates to a stake of approximately 12.7 percent of the company’s outstanding shares. The ownership stake is more than 850 million NOK.

Dividend of NOK 69.8 million

On Thursday, the Building Materials group also came up with figures for the second quarter, which showed, among other things, an increase in sales revenue.

Last year, the company sold building materials for NOK 606.6 million in the second quarter, and this percentage increased by more than 12 percent to NOK 683.2 million in the same period this year.

At the same time, the group reported a pre-tax profit of NOK 84 million in the second quarter, not far from doubling from the same period last year.

In the quarterly report, the group wrote that in the second quarter it paid a dividend equivalent to NOK 69.8 million, or 1 kroner per share.

Controls shares of Norske Skog worth 1.2 billion

With the ownership of investment firm Investor AS, which according to proff.no owns 73 percent of Byggma, Drangsland wants a total of 16.7 million shares in Norske Skog. This corresponds to 17.7 percent of the shares outstanding, and is worth just under NOK 1.2 billion.

On Wednesday, Oceanwood owned approximately 26.9 million shares in Norske Skog, and would enter into a 90-day lock-up agreement for the unsold shares in the offering.

Oceanwood hired Carnegie and Pareto Securities as its brokers. In an announcement to the exchange, it was mentioned that the bidding round will start after work closes on Wednesday.

Oceanwood was the largest shareholder when Norske Skog returned to the Oslo Stock Exchange in the fall of 2019, then owned two-thirds of the shares. Oceanwood was victorious from the paper manufacturer’s refinancing the previous year, and sold about 40 percent of the stock before it was listed on the stock market.(Conditions)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and/or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases using the links that lead directly to our pages. All or part of the Content may be copied or otherwise used with written permission or as permitted by law. For additional terms look here.