The Acme Laboratories, the country's oldest pharmaceutical company, is set to raise capital from institutional and individual investors using the book-building method, a widely used initial public offering mechanism.
Some five crore ordinary shares of Tk 10 each will be offloaded through the system, and the raised funds will be used for setting up three new plants at Dhamrai in Savar, said Md Zahangir Alam, chief financial officer of Acme Laboratories.

He said a roadshow will be organised on Monday at the capital's Sonargaon Hotel to get institutional investors to participate in the bidding to determine the indicative prices of each share.
The expansion will increase the company's revenue and profit, said the company's information memorandum.
Acme Laboratories is the third firm to use the book-building system after the stockmarket regulator modified the pricing rules following the market crash of 2011.

Book-building is a process through which an issuer attempts to determine the price to offer for its security by gauging the demand from institutional investors.
ICB Capital Management is the issue manager.

The pharmaceutical sector is technologically the most developed manufacturing industry in Bangladesh and the second largest industry in terms of contribution to the government's exchequer.

The sector is now one of the fastest growing sectors in the country, with its average growth rate coming to 17.2 percent over the last five years and 13.1 percent over the last decade.
The market growth in 2011 was 25 percent, with approximately Tk 9,000 crore in revenues, it said.
Acme Laboratories expects the pharma market size to exceed Tk 15,000 crore by 2015 and subsequently, wants to take advantage of the business opportunities.

The company is engaged in manufacturing and marketing of generic pharmaceuticals formulation products including human, veterinary and herbal drugs. The products of the company are sold in domestic as well as international markets.

The history of Acme Laboratories dates back to 1954, when a proprietorship firm was founded at Chashara in Narayanganj on a three-bigha land with around 33 people to manufacture drugs.
The firm relocated its plant to Dhamrai in Savar on a land of 10 acres after converting into a private limited company in 1976. Commercial operations at the modern plant began at the end of 1983.