How can I find out how many rights from a rights issue were exercised?

Question

When and how can I find out how many or what percentage of rights following a rights issues were exercised. Logically it should be close to 100% as you would either sell or exercise your rights as long as they are in the money.

(Barclays did a rights issue during the financial crisis and the share price actually dropped below the exercise price and the whole thing was cancelled, but this is truly exceptional.)

Specifically, I'm wondering about Easyjet (EZJ.L), where it should be known by now, but I cannot see anything. The rights were well in the money, so I should expect to see something like they raised the GBP 1.2 billion they wanted. Where can I find out if they did?

Answer 1

In the UK, results of rights issues are announced through a Regulatory Information Service (RIS) (e.g. RNS, which is the leading publisher of such information). The results will typically be reproduced on the company's investor relations website, usually along with other regulatory news or press releases.

In the case of EasyJet's rights issue announced on 2021-09-09, the announcement says that the "expected date of announcement of results of the Rights Issue through a Regulatory Information Service announcement" is "by 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday 28 September 2021" (see the "Indicative summary timetable" section). Today is 2021-09-25, so the results have not yet been announced.

Logically it should be close to 100% as you would either sell or exercise your rights as long as they are in the money.

No, some shareholders may not be eligible to participate in the rights issue if they are resident in an "excluded territory" where the extension or availability of unregistered foreign rights issues would be illegal.

UPDATE: The Results of Rights Issue was published on 2021-09-28 at 7am. The rights issue was 93% subscribed.