British equity firm Apax Partners has begun the process of selling its 23 million shares in Genius Sports.
Apax is the largest shareholder in the sports data and technology company and will aim to sell 20 million shares, with an option to sell another three million the following month.
This would signify that Apex has sold a 10% share of all equity in Genius Sports but the British investment firm will still remain the largest shareholder in the company, retaining 40 million shares during the sale process, holding in total 227 million.
Upon the announcement late last week, Genius Sports’ share price dropped to $5.42 on Thursday morning.
Despite offloading 23 million of its shares, Apax is unlikely to sell all of its shares in Genius as more than half of its equity is held by insiders of the investment firm.
Apax acquired Genius Sports in 2018 and listed the sports data company on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021 via a merger with SPAC, resulting in Apax’s stake in the listed entity to roughly 28%.
The large sale of shares may prove to be fruitful in the long run for Genius, as shares will become more available to trade making the company more attractive to outside investors, even though the short-term could turn out to be stagnant.
