Monday, October 25, 2021
Offer raised
Zooplus bidders join forces
In the bidding series around the pet supplies dealer Zooplus, interested parties keep increasing the offers. Now two interested parties come to an understanding. This could finally turn the takeover battle on the home straight.
The financial investors Hellman & Friedman and EQT are now working together on the takeover of Zooplus and want to end the head-to-head race for the online pet supplies retailer. Together they are now offering 480 euros per share for the Munich-based company, ten euros more than both of the Zooplus shareholders had previously individually promised. That is a total of 3.7 billion euros, as announced by Zooplus.
“With this step we have found a solution to resolve the current stalemate in the takeover process and to enable the investment in Zooplus”, explained Stefan Goetz from Hellman & Friedman and Johannes Reichel from EQT.
The two financial investors had pushed each other up from EUR 390 per share to EUR 470 since mid-August. In the meantime, KKR had also expressed interest. Recently, however, it became apparent that H&F and EQT saw the value of Zooplus gradually being exhausted. The Californian technology investor Hellman & Friedman (H&F) only drew level with the Swedish investment company EQT in order to secure the support of the Zooplus board of directors and to win the major shareholders on its side.
The RAG-Stiftung, the Luxembourg investor Luxempart and Patt had promised to sell their 17 percent to H&F as long as the Americans offered no less than a competitor. Both ran the risk, however, that their offers would ultimately fail because of the hurdle of being offered more than 50 percent of the Zooplus shares.
The acceptance period ends next week
Formally, H&F will keep the strings in hand with the offer. EQT does not increase its offer, which is therefore doomed to failure. However, once the takeover is complete, the two investors want to run Zooplus together. EQT should become a “joint controlling partner with equal governance rights” in the holding, which should then belong to Zooplus. The prerequisite for this is still that H&F collects 50 percent of the Zooplus shares by Wednesday next week (November 3rd). Because the acceptance period is not extended by a trick that is common with many takeovers: H&F bought Zooplus shares on the market for 480 euros; this means that all other shareholders automatically receive the same amount.
The Zooplus shareholders had already counted on a slight increase: on Friday the share went out of Xetra trading at EUR 475.40 and rose again slightly to more than EUR 478.00 on Monday in the first half of the day.
Zooplus boss Cornelius Patt was looking for a new investor himself in order to accelerate the expansion abroad with investments without being under pressure to succeed on the stock exchange to deliver good results. “The planned strategic partnership will enable the company to further expand its competitive edge, gain additional market share and accelerate its efforts to win the growing and rapidly developing European pet category in the long term,” declared Zooplus. EQT and H&F want to take the company off the stock exchange after the takeover.