(Adds results of placing, CEO comments, details, share move)
By Esha Vaish
April 1 (Reuters) - African budget airline Fastjet Plc said it raised gross proceeds of about 50 millionpounds ($75 million) through a share issue to fund its expansionand acquire aircraft.
The London-listed company's shares slumped nearly 13 percenton Wednesday to 1 pence, the price at which each of the 5billion new shares were placed.
The funds from the offering, which represents about 75percent of Fastjet's enlarged share capital, will help thecompany add new international routes and expand in Kenya, SouthAfrica, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, it said.
The company, which aspires to be the first pan-Africanlow-cost carrier, also intends to use excess funds to start aprogramme to acquire used Airbus A319 aircraft.
EasyGroup, the investment vehicle of Haji-Ioannou, boughtstock worth 5 million pounds, or 10 percent of the new shares,Fastjet's chief executive, Ed Winter, told Reuters.
Haji-Ioannou, commonly known as Stelios, founded low-costcarrier easyJet Plc in 1995 and started Fastjet in 2012along with Winter, who was easyJet's chief operating officer.
Stelios had a stake of 10.8 percent in Fastjet beforeWednesday's fundraising, which was first reported by The Times.
A spokesman for Stelios, contacted before the results of theplacing were announced, declined to comment.
The fundraising also brought on board first time investorsin Fastjet. The were Prudential's M&G, UK equity fundmanager Hexam Capital Partners LLP, investment manager J OHambro Capital Management Ltd and South African investment groupOld Mutual.
Fastjet also announced a proposed share consolidation toreduce its share price volatility. No further details weregiven.
The company, which started flying in Tanzania in November2012, said its plans to expand in Africa would give it up to 210million potential customers, or a fifth of the continent'spopulation.
To service that population, Fastjet would have to boost itsaircraft fleet from the three it currently has to 34 strong by2018, Winter said.
By then, Fastjet intends to have leased a third of its fleetand have used equal amounts of debt and equity to finance therest of the fleet. (Editing by Anupama Dwivedi and Savio D'Souza)
easyJet (EZJ)
