An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The first ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing (IPO) in five years, Er­ic So­lis Mar­ket­ing Ltd (So­lis), is seek­ing to raise $11 mil­lion from the sale of 2,750,000 at $4 per share. 

The open­ing date for the IPO is to­day and it clos­es on Au­gust 9. So­lis, a com­pa­ny that leas­es and ser­vices print­ing equip­ment, ex­pect­ed to be list­ed on the SME (Small and Medi­um-sized En­ter­pris­es) mar­ket of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change.

The lead bro­ker is NCB Mer­chant Bank T&T Lim­it­ed and the co-bro­kers are Bourse Bro­kers, Caribbean Stock­bro­kers, First Cit­i­zens Bro­ker­age and Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vices, JMMB Se­cu­ri­ties TT, NCB Mer­chant Bank Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed, Re­pub­lic Wealth Man­age­ment, Shep­pard Stock­bro­kers Lim­it­ed, West In­dies Stock­bro­kers. 

The So­lis prospec­tus, which was avail­able on the com­pa­ny's web­site yes­ter­day, in­di­cates that of the 2,750,000 shares be­ing of­fered:

* In­di­vid­ual in­vestors are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a max­i­mum of 1,125,000 mil­lion shares, equal to 40.9 per cent of the IPO;

* NCB Mer­chant Bank, which is un­der­writ­ing the IPO, has been al­lo­cat­ed a max­i­mum shares 825,000, which equates to 30 per cent;

* In­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive up to 550,000 shares, 20 per cent of the IPO; and

* Di­rec­tors and se­nior of­fi­cers' max­i­mum shares are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive up to 250,000 or 9.1 per cent of the of­fer.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, An­gel­la Per­sad ex­ec­u­tive chair­man said the So­lis par­ent com­pa­ny, Of­fice Au­thor­i­ty, which is owned by sev­er­al pri­vate share­hold­ers, ac­quired So­lis 17 years ago. 

“We feel for the com­pa­ny to sur­vive for an­oth­er 50 years, it must take on a pro­file of in­de­pen­dence. We have full con­fi­dence in the lead­er­ship team and we feel with a dif­fer­ent pro­file and scruti­ny we can step back and see the busi­ness run pro­fes­sion­al­ly. The Of­fice Au­thor­i­ty will still be 67 per cent share­hold­er of the busi­ness af­ter the IPO, be­cause what we are list­ing is 33 per cent,” Per­sad ex­plained. 

She said there are sev­er­al ways that the $11 mil­lion the IPO is ex­pect­ed to yield can be used such as if So­lis want­ed to do a project and it need­ed to pledge pub­licly list­ed shares as col­lat­er­al. 

“It is now an in­de­pen­dent source of col­lat­er­al and in­de­pen­dent se­cu­ri­ty, as it has a pub­lic list­ing, it has a val­ue, you know what the val­ue is. It could be trad­ed as there is a mar­ket for it, so it be­comes an in­de­pen­dent in­stru­ment that Of­fice Au­thor­i­ty now owns,” the ex­ec­u­tive chair added. 

In the So­lis prospec­tus, the com­pa­ny's au­dit­ed rev­enue for the fi­nan­cial year 2023, stood at $28,123,040, in 2022 $20,463,922, and in 2021, $26,356,165. 

While the com­pre­hen­sive in­come for the fi­nan­cial year 2023 was record­ed at $1,830,763, in 2022, $193,568, and in 2021 $340,664. 

The prospec­tus states that in 2023, So­lis's rev­enue and prof­it af­ter tax grew over 2022, which re­flect­ed the trail­ing im­pact of the re­cov­ery from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, as many busi­ness­es ful­ly re­opened and most com­pa­nies dis­con­tin­ued work-from-home pro­grammes.  

As a re­sult of staff re­turn­ing to the of­fice, reg­u­lar us­age of mul­ti­func­tion print­ing and copy­ing de­vices re­turned to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els. More­over, com­pa­nies re-en­gaged in their reg­u­lar cy­cle of up­grad­ing their busi­ness equip­ment, in­cur­ring cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture to do so, or en­ter­ing in­to new rental agree­ments.

The com­pa­ny end­ed 2023 in a strong fi­nan­cial po­si­tion, with $14.4 mil­lion in eq­ui­ty on its bal­ance sheet, 15 per cent up from $12.6 mil­lion in the pri­or year.

SO­LIS of­fers a com­pre­hen­sive suite of print­ers, pho­to­copiers, in­ter­ac­tive dis­plays, soft­ware con­sum­ables, and ser­vices that en­able its cus­tomers to run their busi­ness­es.