Ja­maica’s NCB Fi­nan­cial Group an­nounced yes­ter­day that it is look­ing to is­sue up to 300 mil­lion new shares in an Ad­di­tion­al Pub­lic Of­fer­ing (APO) of shares.

In a no­tice pub­lished on the web­site of the T&T Stock Ex­change yes­ter­day, NCBFG said its board de­cid­ed at a meet­ing last Fri­day, that “an ex­tra­or­di­nary gen­er­al meet­ing should be held to con­sid­er the ad­di­tion­al pub­lic of­fer­ing of new or­di­nary shares and to ap­ply for list­ing of the shares.”

The NCBFG no­tice in­di­cat­ed that the num­ber of shares sought to be is­sued by way of APO was ex­pect­ed to be up to 300 mil­lion.

The com­pa­ny said it would, in due course, is­sue a no­tice re­gard­ing arrange­ments for the ex­tra­or­di­nary gen­er­al meet­ing.

NCBFG, which is list­ed on the T&T and Ja­maica stock ex­changes, is the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er of the West­moor­ings-based, re­gion­al in­sur­er, Guardian Hold­ings Ltd

NCBFG’s is­sued share cap­i­tal is $2,466,762,828. At yes­ter­day’s clos­ing price of TT$3 a share, the fi­nan­cial ser­vice group’s mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion was $7.4 bil­lion (US$1.10 bil­lion).

As at June 30, 2023, NCBFG’s largest share­hold­er was its ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Michael Lee-Chin, who owned $1,467,645,135 equal to 59.49 per cent of the com­pa­ny, most­ly through con­nect­ed par­ties.

Lee-Chin’s to­tal share­hold­ing as at June 30 was 38,708,700 shares less than he held as at March 31, 2023.

That con­firms he was the sell­er of 22,708,700 NCBFG shares on June 9 and 16 mil­lion shares for the pe­ri­od June 27 to June 29.

Ac­cord­ing to the West In­dies Stock­bro­kers (WISE) week­ly mar­ket re­port, NCBFG de­clined by 7.69 per cent last week and is down by 34.21 per cent for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to Sep­tem­ber 8, 2023, on the T&T stock mar­ket.

In­ter­viewed for The Big In­ter­view, broad­cast on CNC3 on June 25, Lee-Chin said he ac­quired a ma­jor­i­ty stake in NCBFG in 2002 at an av­er­age share price of less than J$4 a share.

“We turned that busi­ness around and the NCBFG share price ran up from less than J$4 to over J$200 a share. So you have to keep things in per­spec­tive be­cause my av­er­age price was less than J$4 a share. So even if I were to sell at J$68 a share, to go from J$4 to J$68 a share in 21 years is a phe­nom­e­nal re­turn.

“Pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly, not on­ly do I sell shares, I al­so buy shares, de­pend­ing on what liq­uid­i­ty I need,” said Lee-Chin.

Asked what sig­nal he was send­ing to the share­hold­ers of NCBFG by sell­ing 1.5 per cent of his shares in the com­pa­ny, Lee-Chin said: “No sig­nal be­cause I have 98.5 per cent. I may sell more yes and I may buy some more.”

He al­so said he was sell­ing as­sets to do two things—to pay down debt and to make oth­er in­vest­ments.

Asked whether he had a cash flow prob­lem, Lee-Chin said, “We have not had a div­i­dend from NCBFG for over two years and that is be­ing worked on as we speak. If you stop get­ting in­come, what you have to do, is you need to make sure that you have oth­er sources of liq­uid­i­ty, which would in­clude sell­ing some as­sets to make sure you can ho­n­our what­ev­er oblig­a­tions you have and at the same time grow.”

On May 24, the NCBFG chair­man an­nounced that he was tak­ing a three-month leave of ab­sence from the boards of NCBFG, Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank Ja­maica (NCBJ) and GHL “to al­low him to fo­cus on cer­tain press­ing busi­ness and per­son­al mat­ters.”

On Ju­ly 17, be­fore the end of the three-month leave of ab­sence, NCBFG an­nounced that Lee-Chin’s leave of ab­sence had come to an end.

That was fol­lowed the day af­ter by the an­nounce­ment that the NCBFG CEO and deputy CEO Patrick Hyl­ton and Den­nis Co­hen had, by agree­ment, pro­ceed­ed on va­ca­tion leave for three weeks.

APO’s are nor­mal­ly is­sued to raise cap­i­tal or to boost the cash re­serves of is­su­ing com­pa­nies.