Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on October 10, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: In a bid to take Hovid Bhd private, the pharmaceutical company’s controlling shareholder, David Ho Sue San, has issued a conditional voluntary takeover offer of 38 sen per share for all the remaining shares he does not own.

The offer price is at a six sen or 18.75% premium to Hovid’s last closing price of 32 sen per share last Friday.

Ho, who is also the managing director (MD) and chairman of Hovid, currently holds a 33.72% stake in the group and does not intend to maintain its listing status, according to an announcement issued by Hovid on the stock exchange yesterday.

The takeover offer, with Fajar Astoria Sdn Bhd acting as joint offeror, also includes an offer to purchase the group’s outstanding five-year warrants at 20 sen per warrant.

Ho and Fajar Astoria currently hold 56.43% of the 181.84 million warrants, which are due to expire on June 5, 2018. The warrants’ exercise price is at 18 sen apiece.

The offer will remain open for 21 days after the posting date, according to the offer letter Hovid posted.

Trading of Hovid shares, which were suspended yesterday to make way for the announcement, will resume tomorrow.

The group’s share price fell 24% to 28 sen from its highest this year of 37 sen recorded on Jan 4, two days after the group announced that the manufacturing licences for two of its pharmaceutical plants in Ipoh, Perak had been revoked by the health ministry due to non-compliance with good manufacturing practice.

Due to the halted operations, the pharmaceutical company incurred losses in the last two quarters of the financial year ended June 30, 2017 (FY17), which caused the company to fall into the red with a net loss of RM1.53 million for FY17, compared to a net profit of RM17.9 million in the previous financial year.
 

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