The sale of 5.5m shares would provide additional liquidity in response to strong investor interest in a placing last week, a regulatory filing published on Wednesday morning said. A week ago £25.7m was raised in a placing where shares were priced at 400p.
Bell and his family retain a 24% stake in AJ Bell and remain the largest shareholders in the business he founded in 1995. The IPO saw his personal fortune skyrocket, jumping 299 places in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List, which put his net worth at £360m.
The price achieved in the latest placing of 420p per share is over two-and-half times higher than the pricing at the platform’s IPO on 12 December 2018.
At the time, Bell sold over 11 million shares at 160p each taking home £18.1m in total. He simultaneously purchased £390,000 at IPO for himself, his family and a charitable trust of which he is a director.
He told Portfolio Adviser in a profile interview this year that he does not check the share price of the business.
The pricing of the IPO was questioned with the platform’s shares immediately rallying 34% on their first day of trading and Invesco missing out on £45.6m of gains from its sale of 76 million shares in the listing.
In its first full-year results published as a listed company, AJ Bell revealed profits had risen 33% in the 12-month period to the end of September.
Since AJ Bell listed, the platform has revealed the launch of a decumulation portfolio and a hybrid active-passive range, plus the launch of a retirement investment account and third-party DFM portfolios on its platform set for 2020.
