QBE Insurance Group
Recommendation
Yesterday QBE Insurance announced that it had received subscriptions from more than 75,000 retail shareholders for its share purchase plan. Although details haven’t yet been announced, a fairly severe scale back is certainly coming. With QBE to issue 14m shares through the SPP, our guess is that applicants will only receive roughly $2,000 worth of shares each at the SPP price of $10.70, with the remainder refunded. It’s a disappointing but not unexpected outcome. The stock is up 9% since QBE share purchase plan arbitrage of 16 Mar 12 (Buy – $13.00) and we’ll update the situation again when the scale back details are confirmed. Our recommendation remains BUY.
Note: The model Growth and Income portfolios own shares in QBE Insurance.