South African container glassmaker Consol has pulled out of a planned $240 million Johannesburg stock market flotation, citing challenging market conditions.
Consol priced its IPO at between 1.50 rand and 6.50 rand to raise as much as 3 billion rand ($240.98 million).
“The prevailing environment is not conducive to the offer achieving valuation objectives,” the company said in a statement. “It would not be in the best interests of the company to proceed with the offer at the current time.”
The top-end of the range would have valued the company at roughly 10 billion rand, or about six times its 2017 core earnings of 1.6 billion rand.
Consol, which counts blue-chip companies such as Anheuser-Busch InBev Diageo and Heineken among its customers, is one of the biggest glass packagers in sub-Saharan Africa. It has plants in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, and is also building a factory in Ethiopia.
