BKV Corp. (BKV), a natural gas fracking company, priced its IPO at $18.00 – $1.00 below the bottom of its price range – and sold 15 million shares – to raise $270 million after the closing bell on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. The proceeds were $30 million less than if the IPO had been priced at the $20.00 mid-point of its $19.00-to-$21.00 range, under the terms in the prospectus. BKV’s stock is expected to start trading Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, on the New York Stock Exchange.
Citigroup, Barclays, Evercore ISI, Jefferies and Mizuho were the joint book-runners.
The IPO’s pricing comes almost two years after BKV Corp. first filed its plans to go public.
BKV Corp. will use the IPO’s proceeds to repay about $230 million of debt. That works out to about 52.3 percent of BKV’s $440 million in outstanding debt, as of Sept. 9, 2024.
The Denver-based company is active in the Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth Basin of Texas and the Marcellus Shale in the Appalachian Basin of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Natural gas accounted for about 80 percent of BKV Corp.’s net production while NGL (natural gas liquids) represented about 20 percent, for the six months that ended June 30, 2024, according to the prospectus. The company is also committed to achieving net zero emissions through carbon capture, utilization and sequestration, the prospectus said.
BKV Corp. – before the IPO – was the American subsidiary of Banpu, Thailand’s largest coal mining company. The initials “BKV” stand for Banpu Kalnin Ventures. “Kalnin” is a reference to Chris Kalnin, the CEO.
The company does not intend to pay a dividend, the prospectus said.
BKV Corp. is not profitable, according to financial statements in the prospectus. BKV Corp. swung to a net loss of $17.9 million on $813.13 million in revenue for the 12 months that ended March 31, 2024 – a sharp drop from its net income of $335.4 million on revenue of $1.19 billion for the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, 2023.
