What happened
Not for the first time this year, Horizon Technology Finance (HRZN 2.19%) is tapping the public markets for a fresh round of capital-raising. Investors clearly didn't consider that to be good news, as they aggressively sold out of the stock in reaction. When the smoke cleared, Horizon's share price closed the day down by more than 12%, a far worse performance than the S&P 500 index's 0.6% slide.
So what
Horizon made its initial announcement after hours on Tuesday, following this up with a pricing update.
The company is floating 3.25 million shares of its common stock at a price of $12.50 apiece, which is notably below Tuesday's closing level of $13.27. The underwriters of the issue, a syndicate that includes Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo Securities, have been granted a 30-day option to buy up to a total of 487,500 additional shares collectively.
In Wednesday's announcement, Horizon said it aims to use the proceeds of the issue to retire debt from a revolving credit facility. The company will subsequently reborrow from the facility to make investments (hopefully) complementary to its business. It did not provide any detail about these investment goals.
Now what
If any of this sounds familiar to Horizon-watchers, it should. In March, the specialty finance company floated a 2.5 million-share secondary stock offering, with similar aims for the raised proceeds. This current issue is, of course, larger, and therefore more dilutive to existing shareholders. It's little wonder they weren't all that happy to hear of this development.
