BankUnited Declares Stock Offering

On Tuesday, Florida-based BankUnited, Inc. (BKU) announced the offering of more than 10.3 million shares of its common stock by companies holding stakes in it. These companies comprise The Blackstone Group L.P. (BX), The Carlyle Group (CG), WL Ross & Co. LLC and Centerbridge Partners, L.P.

Later, on the same day, BankUnited announced that each share would be available at a price of $33.50 for the public. The stock offering is likely to close by Mar 7.

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) is serving as underwriter for the aforementioned offering. As per terms of the deal, the underwriter can opt to buy an additional 1.5 million shares in the offering.

Now, why these stakeholders want to vend their ownerships? This could be due to the fact that these stakeholders are not seeing further prospects in BankUnited shares.

On observing BankUnited’s stock price movement, we find that it is currently trading around its 52 week high. The impressive price performance was primarily driven by the overall improvement in the economic scenario wherein the major benchmarks are trading at a high level. Apart from this, BankUnited has delivered positive earning surprises in the trailing four quarters with an average beat of 11.8% which further boosted investors’ confidence.

Now given the innate volatile nature of the stock market, the stakeholders initiated this offering to take advantage of the bull run by booking profit.

Following the news release after the closing bell on Mar 4, BankUnited’s stock fell nearly 1%. However, nothing conclusive can be inferred till we observe the company’s share price movement during the next trading session.

BankUnited currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A better-performing major regional banks is BB&T Corp. (BBT), with a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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