Covestro, the former Bayer MaterialScience business spun off last month, has revealed details of its long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) which aims to raise around 2.5 billion euros ($2.8 billion).
Shares in Covestro, based in Leverkusen, Germany, will be priced between 26.5 euros ($29.70) and 35.5 euros ($39.80) and the stock will be listed on the Frankfurt and Luxembourg exchanges.
Retail investors will be able to bid for shares until Oct. 1, Covestro said in a Sept. 18 news release.
There will also be a number of private placements of shares in Germany, Luxembourg and other countries.
Covestro said if the share price ends up being in the upper range it will sell 70.4 million shares; a mid-range price will see 82.4 million shares sold, and if the price is at the bottom end of the scale some 94.3 million shares will be sold.
Following the IPO, Bayer will hold around 60 percent of the remaining shares in Covestro valuing it at around 7 billion euros ($7.8 billion).
Covestro said after the public offering it would use the proceeds to repay debt to Bayer and expected net debt to be around 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion), including pension liabilities.
Internal calculations put pension liabilities at around 1.45 billion euros ($1.6 billion) for the 14,122 employees in the MaterialScience business in 2014.
Covestro said it had a target for net debt of 2.5 to 3 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for the 2015 financial year.