Curro Holdings has walked away from an attempt to acquire rival Advtech, Curro said on Wednesday, sending Advtech’s share price down by more than 3%.
It said the offer it made to buy Advtech at R13/share no longer made sense in the face of stiff opposition from the latter’s interim CEO Frank Thompson and its board of directors.
“Curro negotiated in good faith believing that the two companies could create a new sizeable mid-cap company with benefits to all stakeholders, a belief that we thought was shared by Advtech management,” the PSG-controlled private education group said in a statement to shareholders.
“Curro management as well as Advtech management agreed upfront that Advtech’s ethos, values and brands would be retained (as in previous acquisitions done by Curro) and that an information process with Advtech teachers and parents would be followed to manage any potential uncertainty,” it said.
“Advtech has subsequently stated that it was uncertain what will happen to same and their comments created definite uncertainty amongst Advtech stakeholders.”
Curro said its offer was conditional on a “limited due diligence investigation”, which would have excluded Advtech’s “strategic plans and other competition-sensitive matters”.
“Chris Boulle, Advtech’s independent chairman, in statements to the media yesterday, made it clear that from an Advtech perspective, there were absolutely no synergies if they are acquired by Curro. Frank Thompson made a similar remark at a Macquarie conference last Friday, 24 July.
“The Curro offer price of R13/share represents a 42% premium to the 30-day volume weighted average price of Advtech at 28 April 2015 and a 62% premium to the R8,02 share price at which Advtech recently issued shares to acquire Maravest, and included potential head office cost-saving synergies (not savings at a school level, as some of Advtech’s leadership have now implied).
“The fact that Advtech management and its board now believe that no savings are possible makes it impossible for Curro to justify a price of R13 per Advtech share and to pay R6bn for Advtech.
“Curro can therefore, without being able to perform a limited due diligence to obtain more information to verify cost savings, not proceed with a general offer to all Advtech shareholders at R13/share.”
Advtech’s share price was last trading down by 2,4% at R12. It touched an intraday low of R11,55/share shortly after Curro said it had abandoned its offer. — © 2015 NewsCentral Media
