Companies

Third company makes competing bid for Rea Vipingo

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Rea Vipingo's competing offers.

A third company has filed an intention to make a competing offer for sisal producer Rea Vipingo.

WWW.Bid Investment Company Limited on Wednesday said that it will offer Sh55 per share for all the Rea Vipingo shares not registered under the Kenyalogy.com, a company that it is related to.

The new offer comes eight days after Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) listed investment firm Centum, made a Sh50 competing offer for the sisal producer compared to Rea Trading Company which on November 27 said that it wants to buy Rea Vipingo for Sh40 a share.

“WWW.Bid Investment Company Limited hereby notifies you of its intention to make a competing take-over offer to acquire for cash consideration all the issued ordinary shares of Rea Vipingo that are not beneficially owned by and registered in the name of a related party, Kenyalogy.com,” said a notice to the filed by Dilesh S. Bid to the Nairobi bourse.

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WWW.Bid Investment’s offer is at a 189.47 per cent premium over Rea Vipingo’s closing price of Sh19 on the last day of trading last year and double the last traded price of Sh27.50.

Its related company, Kenyalogy.com owns 836,900 shares or 1.39 per cent of Rea Vipingo compared to Centum’s stake of 0.49 per cent and Rea Trading Company’s 57.04 per cent (See graphic).

The new offer values the sisal producer at Sh3.3 billion, which is Sh300 million more than Centum’s which valued Rea Vipingo at Sh3 billion and Sh900 million more than Rea Trading Company’s bid which valued the sisal producer at Sh2.4 billion.

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On Tuesday, analysts at stockbrokerage firm AIB Capital revised a takeover research note on Rea Vipingo arguing that the price per share for the sisal producer is Sh168.72 taking into consideration the land it owns in Kenya and Tanzania.

Going by AIB Capital approximations, which are based on an estimated land value of Sh15.64 billion before an adjustment for its illiquidity, Rea Vipingo could be valued at Sh10.12 billion which is more than three times the highest offer that has so far been given.

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WWW.Bid Investments has said that the completion of the takeover offer will proceed if it receives more than 25 per cent of the issued shares of Rea Vipingo and that its intention is to keep the sisal producer on the stock exchange if it still meets the listing requirements.

Rea Trading Company, which is owned by two British brothers, Richard Robinow who is one of the directors of Rea Vipingo Plantations and his brother Jeremy Robinow requires 75 per cent of the sisal producers shares for its deal to go through and the two competing offers are bound to make meeting this threshold difficult.

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It is still not yet clear how WWW.Bid Investments and Investment firm Centum will be financing the purchase of the company although Rea Trading has said that it will get a loan from Commercial Bank of Africa.

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