Argent Raises C$212.3 Million in Canada’s Biggest IPO This Year

Argent Energy Trust, a Calgary-based company seeking to buy oil-and-gas assets in Texas, raised C$212.3 million ($211.5 million) in Canada’s largest initial public offering this year.

Argent sold 21.23 million units for C$10 each, with an initial dividend yield of 10.5 percent, according to sale documents dated today. Argent planned to sell 19.1 million to 21.3 million units for C$10 apiece, with a yield between 10 percent and 11 percent, according to July 16 sale documents.

Argent’s sale is the largest IPO of a Canadian-listed company this year and the biggest since Dundee International Real Estate Investment Trust’s offering in July 2011. Argent plans to use the proceeds to buy oil and natural-gas properties in Texas from Denali Oil & Gas Partners LLC.

Argent is the third company to adopt a corporate structure that mimics Canada’s once popular income trusts, which wooed investors with high-yield securities. Argent follows Eagle Energy Trust and Parallel Energy Trust in becoming a foreign asset income trust. The trust will start trading in Toronto this month under the ticker symbol AET-UN.

Chief Executive Officer Brian Prokop declined to comment.

Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Royal Bank of Canada led a group of banks on the offering. The banks have the option to buy an additional 15 percent after the deal closes.

Canadian companies have raised $1 billion this year in initial stock sales, the slowest since 2008. This year’s total includes the $579 million IPO of Calgary-based Sunshine Oilsands Ltd., which listed in Hong Kong.

To contact the reporter on this story: Doug Alexander in Toronto at dalexander3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net; David Scanlan at dscanlan@bloomberg.net