Dutch company TomTom, a world leader in navigation device manufacturing, reportedly got a 96% take-up for its 5-for-8- rights offer at 4.21 euros recently. This after it has announced that it placed a remaining offering at 5.70 euros per share.
Reports said that TomTom’s 3.4 million shares via private placements, and institutional and professional investors jumped on the rump offering. While many see this as a decline on the company’s financial standing, many more consider this a regular challenge for TomTom.
The Amsterdam-based navigation device company revealed that its shares were up 2.7 at 5.85 euros as of 1034 GMT (6:34 am EDT). This mark solidified their outperformance of a 0.5 percent rise in the Amsterdam blue chip index. Market updates revealed that TomTom is struggling with 1.16 billion euros of debt after it purchased another Dutch entity, Teleatlas. The buying of the digital map maker outfit for 2.9 billion euros in 2008 seemed to have been more of a disadvantage for TomTom.
The Dutch company continues its pursuits to raise around 430 million euros from the rights issues and a private placing to reduce its debt and cope with the economic slump. The four founders of TomTom is reportedly going to hold 47.2 percent of the company shares once the rights issues will be closed. On the other hand, Janivo Holding and Cyrte Investments will hold an approximated 8.4 percent share of TomTom, as revealed by the company itself.
TomTom has been greatly known to make different types of portable navigation devices for cars, and is speeding up additional features for their products already out in the market. It has also made a concrete performance in production of handheld computers. Among other manufacturers of portable navigation gadgets and handheld computers, US-based Garmin Ltd. is TomTom’s strongest competitor.
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