Glencore agreed to sell just-under a 10% stake in its agriculture unit to Canada’s British Columbia Investment Management Corp for $624.9mn in cash as it continues to cut debt.
The commodities trader and miner, which sold a 40% stake in the business to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for $2.5bn in April, will retain a majority 50.01% stake, it said in a statement on Wednesday. The agreement takes the value of disposals this year to $3.2bn, compared to its target for 2016 of $4bn to $5bn.
“These transactions highlight the superior value of Glencore Agri, with its advantaged asset footprint and business model, relative to its closest peers,” Glencore chief executive officer Ivan Glasenberg said in the statement. The deal values Glencore Agri at $6.25bn, the statement said.
Glencore shares rose as much as 5.9% in London after Bloomberg News first reported the sale on Wednesday. The stock slipped 1.6% to 143.40 pence as of 10:26 a.m. in London yesterday. The company is valued at about £21bn ($31bn). The sale is expected to close in the second half of the year.
Glencore has been selling assets and cutting costs under its programme to reduce net debt to as low as $17bn this year, compared with $25.9bn at the end of 2015. The company was in talks with potential investors from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Canada to sell a further stake in the agriculture unit, people familiar with the matter said last month. The business handles wheat, corn, barley, biofuels, cotton and sugar.
BCIMC, Canada’s fourth-largest pension fund, has a history of investing alongside Canada Pension, including most recently as part of a consortium that aims to acquire Australian port and rail company Asciano for roughly A$9bn ($6.7bn).
“Our investment in Glencore Agri provides an excellent opportunity for BCIMC to increase and diversify our exposure within the agricultural space, a sector we view as critical to supporting rising levels of global prosperity,” Lincoln Webb, a senior vice-president at BCIMC said in a statement.
Barclays, Citigroup and Credit Suisse Group were joint advisers to Glencore, and Linklaters provided legal advice. Royal Bank of Canada advised BCIMC.
The Victoria, BC-based pension fund has about C$124bn ($98bn) in assets under management, and oversees the retirement savings of 526,000 plan members in the province as well as the insurance and benefit funds of 2.2mn people in British Columbia.
Glencore became a major agriculture player when it agreed to buy Canadian grain handler Viterra for C$6.1bn ($4.6bn) in 2012. With a global network of more than 200 storage facilities and 23 ports, the company buys products from farmers, processors and other suppliers and sells to customers including local importers and government agencies.
The commodities and mining firm has signalled plans to grow the agriculture business with its new partners, opening the door to further consolidation in the industry. Glasenberg said the two Canadian pension funds would help Glencore Agri “significant opportunities” emerging in the next few years.
In the past, the CEO has said the company needs to expand in the US — the world’s largest exporter of agricultural commodities.
The latest sale by Glencore caps three years of intense deal making in the agriculture industry. Last year, Mitsubishi Corp paid just over $1bn for a 20% stake in food trader Olam International Marubeni Corp, one of Japan’s top-five trading houses, bought US grain merchant Gavilon Holdings for $2.7bn plus debt in 2013.
Cofco Corp, China’s largest food company, spent more than $4bn over two years to build a global grain trader. It acquired the grains and oilseeds unit of Noble Group Ltd and a majority stake in Dutch trader Nidera.
Peter Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg, the parent of Bloomberg News, is a senior independent non-executive director at Glencore.