Vitol launches $714m Viva Energy block trade; BoA, UBS nab roles

afr.com:

Oil trading giant Vitol launched a $714 million block trade in Viva Energy – worth 16.1 per cent of the company – after market close on Tuesday evening, as revealed by Street Talk.

Viva Energy bought Geelong Refinery and more than 700 suburban petrol stations that previously belonged to Shell.  

Vitol’s brokers Bank of America and UBS were seeking buyers for 248.6 million shares at $2.87 apiece. The offer price represented 2 per cent percent discount to Viva’s last close and was 9.2 per cent lower than Monday’s close.

The trade would take Vitol to about 30 per cent of Viva Energy’s register. It’s the first time that Vitol’s sold down since Viva’s IPO in 2018, and it has no intention to sell further in the “short to medium term”, according to the term sheet. It would still be Viva’s largest shareholder.

It was a fixed price bookbuild. Bids were due by 9pm for Asia Pacific investors and at midnight for the rest of the world. It comes after Street Talk reported Vitol was weighing a selldown of at least $500 million via a block trade expected to launch in the coming days.

Vitol and Viva Energy’s history goes back to 2014, when the Vitol Investment Partnership (VIPL) acquired Royal Dutch Shell’s downstream operations for $2.9 billion and renamed them Viva Energy. It later bought the aviation business and a 50 per cent stake in Liberty Oil, before spinning off a petrol stations property REIT and floating what was left as Viva Energy in 2018. Vitol has two representatives on Viva Energy’s board.

Viva Energy is one of the country’s biggest fuel companies. It has 24 per cent of the downstream petroleum market, selling fuel and fuel products via the Shell brand in Australia and a refinery in Geelong.

Earlier this year, it reached