Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on August 5, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleNaturgy sold 5.5% of its shares, raising 500 million euros, to increase its free float to 15%, aiming to return to main stock indexes.
MADRID (Reuters) -Spanish power utility Naturgy said on Tuesday it sold about 5.5% of its shares through an accelerated bookbuilding and a bilateral sale as part of its plan to increase its free float and return to the main stock market indexes.
The company said it raised 500 million euros ($577.30 million) selling 2% of its shares at 25.90 euros through an accelerated bookbuilding, opened on Monday.
Morgan Stanley advised the bookbuilding.
In a separate operation, Naturgy agreed to sell 3.5% of its shares to an unidentified "international financial entity", the company said without disclosing the price per share.
The operations would increase Naturgy's free float - or shares available to the public for trading - to 15%, which the company has previously said should be enough to achieve its goal of returning to the main indexes.
Naturgy in February said it would buy back almost 2.5 billion euros of its own shares at 26.5 euros per share, or about 9.08% of its equity, and then resell these shares in the market. Its four main shareholders backed the plan and agreed to reduce their stakes.
With these two sales, the company reduced the shares it holds to 4.5% down from 9.99%.
($1 = 0.8661 euros)
(Reporting by Inti Landauro)
Free float refers to the percentage of a company's shares that are available for trading by the public, excluding locked-in shares held by insiders and major shareholders.
Accelerated bookbuilding is a method used by companies to quickly raise capital by selling shares to institutional investors, often within a short timeframe.
A share buyback occurs when a company purchases its own shares from the marketplace, reducing the number of outstanding shares and often increasing the share price.
A stock market index is a measurement of the performance of a group of stocks, representing a specific segment of the market, used to gauge market trends.
Capital raising is the process of obtaining funds to finance a company's operations, growth, or expansion, typically through issuing shares or debt.
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