Mitsubishi pondering $2B share sale?

Sun, 15 Sep 2013

Mitsubishi makes the brilliantly fast, wonderfully fun Lancer Evolution. Outside of that road-going rally car, the rest of the range is pretty poor - the new Outlander isn't bad, but the subcompact Mirage looks like might've been competitive five years ago, while the Galant and Lancer have suffered from serial neglect.

This hasn't just lead to rumors of Mitsu's death in America; the subsidiary of the massive Mitsubishi Group has been in trouble at home, too. It was bailed out by three other Mitsubishi Group companies - Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Corporation - between 2004 and 2005, according to Bloomberg. Now, it's attempting to extricate itself from "emergency mode," as analyst Koichi Sugimoto told the financial site, adding that "they're still in the very early stages of recovery."

As part of the bailout, Mitsubishi issued its three saviors billions of dollars of preferred shares, which don't have voting rights. The problem is, Mitsubishi hasn't issued dividend payments since 1998, and these stocks aren't exactly competing with Apple or Google, in terms of value. In other words, they're mostly worthless. With a public offering, Mitsubishi is expecting to raise 200 billion yen, or about $2 billion, in order to reduce the number of preferred shares. If all goes according to plan, it will wipe out preferred shares by March of 2014, or the end of fiscal year 2013.

Much like the American companies that were bailed out, Mitsubishi is seeing a resurgence (just not in the US market). Bloomberg reports that the company's net income will go up 32 percent this year and rise to 50 billion yen, or $5.03 billion, thanks to high demand in southeast Asia. A weakened yen and a partnership with Nissan in China is helping forecasts as well. Mitsubishi should announce the offering near the end of October, with the sale itself happening in the fourth quarter of the 2013 fiscal year.

By Brandon Turkus