KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 15): RHB Bank Bhd's share price fell by 3.2% or 17 sen to RM5.17, becoming one of Bursa Malaysia's top decliners today, after Aabar Investment PJS offered to sell about 120.3 million of its RHB shares, or about a 3% stake, at a price ranging between RM5.07 and RM5.18 each.
The Middle Eastern shareholder is the second largest shareholder of the banking group with about 17.75% equity stake.
The Edge Financial Daily today reported that the deal could raise as much as RM623.2 million from the sale for Aabar, with CIMB Investment Bank and JPMorgan being the joint bookrunners for the deal.
While the offer price of between RM5.07 and RM5.18 represents a discount of only about 3% to 5.06% to RHB's closing price of RM5.34 yesterday, it is a huge discount to the entry cost for Aabar, which paid about RM10.80 per share when it acquired a 24.9% stake in RHB from its sister company Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) back in 2011.
The deal was largely seen as a left-to-right-hand transfer deal back then with RHB being valued at 2.25 times its book value.
Prior to that, ADCB has acquired the stake from the Employees Provident Fund for about RM7.20 a share, which is still higher than the current disposal price.
It is reported that the buyers of the current block of shares are expected to be local and international institutions.
At current level, RHB Bank is trading at a trailing P/E of 10.5 times and has a price-to-book value of about 0.93 times.