Softbank buys 10.1% stake in Sweden’s Sinch

Softbank-owned SB Management has bought a 10.1% stake in Swedish cloud computing services provider Sinch, acquiring stakes from some major shareholders and participating in a directed share issue, Sinch said late on Monday.

Sinch said in a statement it had issued 3.2 million new shares at a subscription price of 1.050 crowns per share, a 6.6% discount to Monday’s closing price, raising about 3.3 billion Swedish crowns ($386 million) for the firm.

“The company intends to mainly use the proceeds from the share issue to increase the company’s financial flexibility for new acquisitions,” Sinch said.

The company, which has a scalable platform for messaging, voice and video, said that a fund managed by Softbank subsidiary SB Management had subscribed 1,200,000 shares in the issue.

Sinch added that some larger shareholders, including several co-founders, had also sold 5,200,000 existing shares to SB Management at 900 crowns per share.

The Swedish firm’s stock has surged nearly 300% in 2020. Reuters