JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s Discovery, the country’s biggest health insurer, said on Tuesday it plans a rights issue to raise as much as 5 billion rand ($429 million) to finance expansion, sending its shares down nearly 4 percent.
Discovery is offering the new shares at 90 rand each, compared with the 112.38 rand its stock was trading at on the Johannesburg stock exchange at 0746 GMT.
The insurer, which has operations in Europe and Asia, said its rights issue was underwritten by Rand Merchant Insurance Holdings.
Diluted normalised headline earnings for the first six months to the end of December rose 17 percent to 340.3 cents a share, the company said. Normalised headline earnings exclude certain one-off items.
($1 = 11.6546 rand)
