Barnes Selling Stock to Pay for Acquisition

John Wolz

Barnes Group Inc. announced it will sell more than 2 million shares of its common stock and use the proceeds to help pay down the debt it incurred in acquiring distributor Kar Products and parts of its Canadian subsidiary, A&H Bolt & Nut Co.
Barnes paid $78.5 million for Kar in February.
Barnes will offer 2 million shares currently owned by the company and 823,506 shares owned by GC-Sun Holdings II, an existing shareholder. The company also said it would give underwriters of the public offering an option to buy an additional 423,525 shares to cover any over-allotments. Barrnes has a total of 19,894,312 shares of common stock outstanding.
The company said it expects net proceeds from the stock sale to be between $39.9 million and $48.5 million.
Kar Products, which had sales of $122 million last year, is a MRO distributor to the industrial, construction and transportation markets.
The acquisition added a sales force of about 600 to Barnes� existing sales and service organization and gave the company nearly 40,000 new customers in all 50 states. Barnes officials believe the deal places the company among the top 10 industrial distributors in North America, the company said in its SEC filing. Web: barnesgroupinc.com �2003 FastenerNews.com