JAB Holding Co., the Netherlands-based majority owner of Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) since its creation in 2018, has sold 87 million shares of its KDP stock to the public at $29.10 per share, raising around $2.5 billion in cash.
In the process, KDP itself bought 35 million of those shares, and company executives also bought significant stakes.
JAB also granted an option to the underwriter to purchase up to 13 million more shares for a period of 30 days following the date of the offering, which was Feb. 29. If all 100 million shares are sold to the public, JAB will have reduced its ownership in the coffee machine-soda company to 22%.
JAB and Mondelez engineered the mid-2018 merger of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, owner of the Keurig brand, with Dr Pepper Snapple Group at a price of $18.7 billion. Both companies have been slowly reducing their holdings in KDP over the years, and Mondelez fully exited last summer.
Before the sale, JAB held 383 million KDP shares. "KDP will continue to be one of our most important investments and we expect to continue to be a long-term anchor shareholder in KDP, at or above the 20% ownership level," said Joachim Creus, CEO of JAB.
