Carpetright announces £60m fundraising

Embattled retailer Carpetright announced plans for a £60m placing and open offer on Friday as part of its efforts to turnaround the business.

The group plans to issue just over 232.4m shares at 28p each, which represents a discount of 15.8% to the closing price on Thursday.

Carpetright said that £6m of the proceeds will be used to cover the additional costs associated with implementing its company voluntary arrangement, while £12.5m will be used to repay the short-term unsecured loan from its largest shareholder, Meditor, and £33m will be used to fund its capital expenditure plans. The rest of the proceeds are earmarked for ongoing working capital requirements.

Independent retail analyst Nick Bubb said: "The earnings dilution is huge, but it has guaranteed the survival of the business and enabled it to fund the restructuring. How many of its core hapless shareholders have stumped up is unclear."

The equity raising is subject to the passing of the resolutions at the company’s general meeting and to there being no challenge to the CVA.

Chief executive officer Wilf Walsh said: "We are delighted to have received such strong support from our shareholders and other investors in achieving this fully underwritten fundraise. The £60m proceeds from the placing and open offer will give us the resources we need to complete our restructuring and accelerate our recovery plan.

"As well as funding implementation of the CVA to create a right-sized estate of stores on sustainable rents, it will provide the necessary capital to refurbish and modernise the ongoing store estate and to upgrade our digital platform - both vital investments in our future. We believe that a recapitalised market leader will ultimately be better for customers, suppliers, landlords and shareholders."

Shore Capital analyst Phil Carroll said: "We now await any relevant company guidance in the preliminary results in June after which we should be able to start modelling how the restructure and recovery of the business could look in the years to come. In the meantime, we retain our hold stance."

Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com, said the placing is going to get "gobbled up pretty quickly" if they're paying 18% interest to their shareholders.

"It's not a pretty picture but at least they have the funds to keep going for now," he added. He pointed out that the company expended too fast, but said that can be remedied by the CVA.

"But competition and tough market conditions are not going away."

At 0900 BST, the shares were up 8.3% to 36p.