Good evening,

One of Australia’s biggest chicken producers, ProTen, is strutting out to meet potential buyers after owners Aware Super and Roc Partners brought in Macquarie Capital to oversee a strategic review.

Street Talk understands MacCap began reaching out to prospective equity investors over the weekend, telling them to think about ProTen’s $150 million revenue and $70 million EBITDA for the 2024 financial year. It has $1 billion worth of assets and property on its books.

Sources said MacCap is well advanced with a debt refinancing that would see ProTen emerge with an infrastructure-style funding package. ProTen’s owners haven’t made a final decision regarding a sale, despite giving their bankers the go-ahead to gauge equity investors’ appetite. The looming deal was first revealed by this column in June.

Read the full story tomorrow and more on the Street Talk page.

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Street Talk can reveal Five V Capital is pitching a new $325 million fund to institutional investors and high-net-worth types. The pitch to investors rests on three claims: smaller deals have outsized returns; fewer funds scan this end of the market; and Five V has proven its mettle in the mid-market.

A sharp rally in bank stocks helped push the Australian sharemarket higher on Friday.

Click here for the latest equity market wrap.