Clothing giant offers NZ stake

By PAUL PANCKHURST

New Zealand investors are getting a bite at the billion-dollar share float of Pacific Brands, the Australian company behind clothing brands such as Jockey and Berlei.

Pacific Brands is expected to raise up to $1.6 billion in an initial public offering.

A dual listing is planned on the Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges in what will be the biggest transtasman float since Promina raised $2.1 billion in May last year. The float is also the largest planned so far in Australia this year.

The joint lead managers of the offer are investment banks Macquarie and UBS and the co-managers in New Zealand will be ABN Amro Craigs and First NZ Capital.

Institutional investors from New Zealand were briefed in Australia last week on the planned offer. Advertisements broke in Australia yesterday, inviting investors to pre-register for a prospectus.

A similar advertising campaign to woo New Zealand investors was expected to break today.

Pacific Brands said a prospectus was expected to be available early next month.

New Zealand investors accounted for 12 per cent of the take-up of Promina's share offer.

If that happened again, they would put up to $190 million into the Pacific Brands float.

In New Zealand, the general manager of Pacific Brands Clothing, Mark Jordan, said the clothing business had 360 staff and was the largest part of Pacific Brands' operations here.

Its best known brands were Jockey, Bonds, Berlei and Rio.

The company has a head office and a manufacturing operation in Christchurch. It also manufactures in Palmerston North, and has a distribution, sales and marketing presence in Auckland.

Jordan said Pacific Brands also had bedding, footwear and sports goods businesses in New Zealand.

The vendors in the float are private equity funds Catalyst and CVC Asia Pacific. They bought the business from the ailing conglomerate Pacific Dunlop in 2001 for $930 million. The company is reported to generate annual sales of $1.7 billion.

Headquartered in Melbourne, Pacific Brands says it has over 6400 employees worldwide, including the United States, United Kingdom, China, Malaysia and Indonesia.

In New Zealand, the float will feed into what investment bankers expect to be a strong run for IPOs for the next six months.

The previously heavy run of debt issues has slowed, the equity market is the investor's friend after last year delivering a 26 per cent return - and there have been few new issues to tap a pent-up demand.

Investment banks report healthy pipelines of IPOs.

Company stats

Each year, Pacific Brands makes or markets:

* 70 million pairs of underpants

* 46 million pairs of socks

* 9 million bras

* 20 million pairs of shoes

* 5 million golf balls

* 450,000 mattresses

* 4 million pillows

* 550,000 quilts

* 10 sq km of carpet underlay

Source: Pacific Brands