South Africa's Long4Life to Buy Fashion Retailer Rage for $287 Million

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - South African investment firm Long4Life has agreed to buy fashion retailer Rage for 3.9 billion rand ($287.5 million) to strengthen its lifestyle brands business.

The amount will be settled through a combination of shares and cash from internal resources and bank debt, Long4Life said in a statement on Tuesday.

As part of the deal, Long4Life, which targets investments with a lifestyle focus, will issue 270 million ordinary shares at 5.50 rand per share, worth 1.5 billion rand in total.

Following this, the owners of Rage will hold about a 22.8 percent stake in Long4Life.

The balance of 2.4 billion rand will be paid in cash.

"Rage presents an exciting opportunity to build on Long4Life’s existing lifestyle brands platform with additional cross selling opportunities," Long4Life said.

"The addition of Rage will amplify Long4Life's retail product offering to include all segments of the LSM market."

Brian Joffe, the owner of Long4Life, listed the investment firm in 2017 and has since made a string of acquisitions, including sporting goods retailer Holdsport and beauty chain Sorbet.

Established in 1996, Rage Distribution Proprietary Limited sells footwear, clothes and accessories in the adult and children's markets.

It currently has 555 stores across the country and plans to roll out about 90 new stores per year.

For the year to the end of June 2017, Rage is expected to make revenue of 1.3 billion rand and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of 360 million rand.

After the acquisition, the combined Long4Life group is expected to deliver EBITDA in excess of 850 million rand, the firm said.

At 8:45am, Long4Life shares were down 0.5 percent at 5.68 rand.

By Nqobile Dludla; Editors: Louise Heavens and Mark Potter.