JIMMY MOYAHA: At 07:05 this morning we received a Sens announcement from Bell Equipment regarding a joint firm intention to move around and adjust some shares, but also to eventually delist the company – certainly developments that the market was appreciative of. The share price rallied 46% or R15 in today’s market movements.
Fast forward three years and they’re trying again at R53/share cash, which is a much better offer than the original R10/share, vindicating the activists; and sadly another company is delisting from the JSE. JIMMY MOYAHA: Anthony, when we look at some of the conditions around this particular offer, are there any conditions that stand out to you that might be a bit of a hurdle to get through?
There’s nothing in this transaction, in looking through the initial documentation, which leads me to believe that shareholders quite frankly will take the money and run. So it’ll be interesting to see how the Bell family going forward actually has resources to fund what will and could be a very expensive scenario as the world goes towards autonomous and alternative-fuel vehicles.
So the easiest way is to stay exactly where you are or potentially to sell it to private equity. And we’ve seen that over the last two years most deals have been snapped up by private equity areas, and that’s why the JSE is losing companies.