G. Willi-Food secures $10 million from stock sale; Save the World Air seals $10 million equity line

By Sheri Kasprzak

New York, Sept. 21 - As stocks took a dip on Thursday, PIPE volume took a dive as well.

Even so, one sellside market source said he remains optimistic about private placement volume coming into the fall and winter months.

"Beyond the fact that the closer you get to the end of the year, the better volume tends to get, oil prices are way, way down and that's going to help in terms of stocks," he said. "I expect things to pick up substantially into November and December."

Even so, oil prices did make a slight comeback on Thursday, gaining 85 cents to close at $61.59 per barrel.

Stocks, however, looked much bleaker with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling by 79.96 to close at 11,533.23. The Nasdaq composite index gave up 15.14 to close at 2,237.75 and the Standard & Poor's 500 composite index slipped 7.15 to end at 1,318.03.

Moving to particular offerings, G. Willi-Food International Ltd. announced its plans to settle a $10,000,650 private placement of stock.

G. Willi's stock slipped on Thursday after the offering was announced in the morning, losing 10 cents, or 1.43%, to end at $6.90 (Nasdaq: WILC).

A group of institutional investors has agreed to buy 1,653,000 shares at $6.05 each.

The investors will also receive warrants for 496,000 shares, exercisable for three years at $8.00 each. The warrants may be redeemed if the volume weighted average price of the company's stock exceeds $16.00 for 20 consecutive trading days.

Christopher Chu, investor relations representative for G. Willi-Food, did not immediately return requests for comment on the offering by press time Thursday.

The offering is scheduled to close within 10 to 15 days.

Looking to the company's latest earnings statement, G. Willi-Food reported revenues of $9.7 million for the second quarter compared with revenues of $8.8 million for the second quarter of 2005.

Based in Yavne, Israel, G. Willi-Food is a kosher food distribution company.

Save the World stock slips

After receiving a $10 million equity line of credit from Dutchess Private Equities Fund, LP, Save the World Air, Inc.'s stock dropped by more than 4%.

In the equity line, Dutchess may buy shares of Save the World at 97% of the lowest closing bid price for the five trading days before a draw over the course of three years.

Each draw is limited to either 200% of the average daily U.S. market trading volume for the 10 trading days before the request of a draw or $250,000.

Spencer Clarke LLC was the placement agent.

Proceeds will be used for sales and product development, working capital and general corporate purposes.

The equity line was announced Thursday, and the company's stock lost 6 cents, or 4.11%, to end at $1.40 (OTCBB: ZERO).

Save the World has headed to the private placement market before. The company sold 1,381,500 units at $1.00 each in that deal, which closed April 1, 2005. The units included one share and one warrant.

Based in North Hollywood, Calif., Save the World develops devices used to reduce pollution from automobiles.

In other equity line news, Solexa, Inc.'s stock slipped by 33 cents, or 3.86%, to end at $8.21 (Nasdaq: SLXA) after wrapping a $75 million common stock equity financing on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, when the company entered into the agreement with Azimuth Opportunity Ltd., the stock gained 5 cents to close at $8.54 but gave up 2 cents in after-hours trading.

Under the two-year agreement, Azimuth may buy shares of Solexa at a discount ranging from 3.625% to 5.375%, based on the stock price.

Based in Hayward, Calif., Solexa develops technologies to perform a range of analyses, including whole genome re-sequencing, gene expression analysis and small RNA analysis.

Attunity gets $1 million

Elsewhere in PIPE news, Attunity, Ltd. closed a second tranche of its previously announced private placement for $1 million, bringing the total proceeds to $6 million.

The company sold another 800,000 shares at $1.25 each and issued warrants for 400,000 shares, exercisable at $1.25 each for three years.

The first closing occurred on Aug. 29 after the company sold 4 million shares at the same price.

On Thursday, the company's stock closed unchanged at $1.27 (Nasdaq: ATTU).

Based in Burlington, Mass., Attunity develops computer integration software.

Alberta Clipper stock up

In secondary market action, Alberta Clipper Energy Inc.'s stock edged up as oil prices climbed and following the pricing of a C$25 million private placement.

The stock edged up by a penny on Thursday to close at C$6.06 (Toronto: ACN). On Wednesday, the stock gave up 20 cents, or 3.2%, to end at C$6.05.

The volume of shares traded Thursday moved back to near-normal levels with 246,103 shares traded, compared with the average 209,761 shares. On Wednesday, the volume jumped to 1,169,356 shares.

In the placement, the company intends to sell shares at C$6.00 each, a slight discount to the company's C$6.25 closing stock price on Tuesday.

GMP Securities LP leads the syndicate of underwriters placing the deal, which is scheduled to close in early October.

The deal priced early Wednesday as a C$20 million offering but was upsized to C$25 million later in the day.

Proceeds will be used to fund the company's expanded Leduc light-oil exploration program in the Sylvan Lake area of Alberta.

Calgary, Alta.-based Alberta Clipper is an oil and natural gas exploration, development and production company.

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