SWVL Sells $20M Worth of Shares in a Private Placement Deal
SWVL, an Egyptian-born startup that provides shared mobility services for intercity and intra-city trips, has signed an agreement with US-based institutional investors for the sale and purchase of 12.1 million shares along with securities for $20 million at $1.65 per share, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
The mobility startup says the private placement and sale of securities will take effect on Friday.
The Series A warrants and Series B warrants will expire five years from the date of issuance and two years from the date of issuance, respectively. The firm will receive an additional $30 million, provided the warrants are exercised within the said period.
This comes barely weeks that SWVL announced the termination of its acquisition deal with Zeloo, a UK-based B2B smart bus operator, according to a statement issued by the company on Friday 29 July 2022.
SWVL Recent Activities
The deal which was initially announced on April 28 would have seen SWVL completely acquire Zeelo for what is now believed to be in the region of $100 million. However, Zeelo announced the cancelation of the deal, citing general market conditions and the obvious slump in tech stocks.
Irrespective of the setbacks, as a result of the global economic downturn which SWVl reacted by laying off 30% of its staff in late May this year in an attempt to attain profitability by 2023. A month later, it ceased operations in Kenya and Pakistan, as well as suspended some routes in Egypt. The mobility firm has acquired five global startups since its inception, in addition to this failed bid to add Zeelo to its ranks. Urbvan, a Mexican mass transportation company, is the most recent addition to its acquisition spree.
SWVL which recently signed a strategic agreement with City Group Co. KSCP (“City Group”), a leading transport operator and provider of warehouse services in Kuwait, to use Swvl’s Software as a Service (“SaaS”) products has raised a total of $264 million since its founding in Egypt in 2017.