SINGAPORE (Jan 18): Courts Asia, the regional purveyor of furniture and household and IT appliances, has received a 20.5 cents voluntary conditional cash offer from Nojima Asia Pacific for all its issued and outstanding ordinary shares.
The offer price represents an approximately 34.9% premium above the closing price of 15.2 cents on the last trading date of Wednesday and an approximately 23.3% premium above the volume weighted average price (VWAP) per share over the six-month period prior to and including the last trading date.
As of Friday, Courts Asia has an issued and fully paid up share capital of $267.3 million, comprising 517.5 million shares with 42.5 million treasury shares. The offer values Courts Asia at stake $106 million.
Nojima Asia Pacific is the offer vehicle of sole shareholder Nojima Corp, a Tokyo-listed electrical appliance retail chain mainly dealing with the sale of consumer digital appliances, in Japan. It also has presence in Cambodia, where it specialises in digital appliances.
Nojima has a market capitalisation of $1.4 billion and revenues of $6.1 billion.
The offeror has been contemplating the entry into the consumer appliance retail market in Southeast Asia, where market growth is expected. With the acquisition of the Courts Asia, Nojima expects to gain a strong foothold in Southeast Asia.
The offeror also believes Courts Asia and its own business are complementary and there are potential synergies that can be created, adds PricewaterhouseCoopers Corporate Finance who drew up the offer document.
In addition, the trading volume of shares in Courts Asia has been generally low, with an average daily trading volume of approximately 208,346 shares during the 12-month period.
The offeror has received an undertaking from Singapore Retail Group, the 73.8% Courts Asia shareholder, to tender all of its 382 million shares in acceptance of the offer and not to accept or permit the acceptance of any competing offer.
