FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Springer Nature, the publisher of science magazines Nature and Scientific American, is offering shares worth up to 1.6 billion euros (1.4 billion pounds) in its planned initial public offering (IPO), it said on Wednesday.
The company has set a price range of 10.50-14.50 euros a share, with new shares worth 1.2 billion euros being sold and a free float of up to 44.8 percent. Trading is expected to start on the Frankfurt exchange on May 9.
Buyout group BC Partners will sell some of its shares in the listing while majority owner Holtzbrinck will acquire shares worth 100 million euros in the offering.
The IPO adds to a series of listings on the Frankfurt stock exchange, which has seen heavyweights such as Siemens' medical technology unit Healthineers (DE:SHLG) and Deutsche Bank 's (DE:DBKGn) asset management arm DWS (DE:DWSG) list in recent weeks.
Springer Nature was formed in 2015 through the merger of Holtzbrinck's Macmillan Science and Education unit with BC Partners' Springer business, which publishes scientific, technical and medical books and journals.
The tie-up was designed to make it easier to compete with the likes of RELX (L:REL) and Informa (L:INF) as publishers increasingly shift to digital content and readers use smartphones and tablets to access information.
Springer Nature, which says it is the largest English language academic book publisher with 13,000 new books every year, posted revenues of 1.64 billion euros in 2017, up 2.5 percent from 2016.
Springer Nature is a separate company from German publisher Axel Springer (DE:SPRGn).