Equity

3 Months Ended

Apr. 02, 2022

Equity [Abstract]

Equity

Equity

Movements in the Company’s number of shares in issue for the three months ended April 2, 2022 and April 3, 2021, respectively, were as follows:

	Three months ended
(number of shares)	April 2, 2022	April 3, 2021
Balance as of the beginning of the period	291,282,137	290,853,067
Exercise of share options	17,828	216,006
Vesting of restricted stock units, net of withholding taxes	744,915	529,909
Shares repurchased and cancelled	(3,465,917)	—
Balance as of the end of the period	288,578,963	291,598,982

The Company has one class of authorized and issued shares, with a par value of $0.01, and each share has equal voting rights.

In November 2021, the Company established a repurchase program allowing for up to $200 million in authorized share repurchases. During the three months ended April 2, 2022, Gates repurchased 11,465,917 shares at an aggregate cost of $174.7 million, and incurred an additional $1.2 million of costs related directly to these repurchases. All shares repurchased were cancelled, except for 8,000,000 shares repurchased in March 2022 as described further below, which remained uncancelled at April 2, 2022, and are accordingly reflected as treasury shares. These shares are expected to be cancelled during May 2022.

On March 24, 2022, the Company, certain selling shareholders affiliated with Blackstone Inc. and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. (“Citigroup”) entered into an underwriting agreement pursuant to which the selling shareholders agreed to sell to Citigroup 5,000,000 ordinary shares of the Company at a price of $15.14 per ordinary share (the “Offering”). The selling shareholders also granted to Citigroup an option to purchase up to 750,000 additional ordinary shares of the Company; this option was exercised in full on March 25, 2022. The Company did not receive any proceeds from the sale of ordinary shares in the Offering, which closed on March 30, 2022.

In connection with the Offering, the Company repurchased 8,000,000 ordinary shares through Citigroup from the same selling shareholders at a price of $15.14 per ordinary share for an aggregate consideration of $121.1 million, plus costs directly related to the transaction of $0.8 million. This repurchase was funded by cash on hand and a borrowing of $70.0 million under Gates’ asset-backed revolving credit facility.