KUALA LUMPUR (July 8): The Federal Land Development Authority (Felda) resumed its FGV Holdings Bhd share buy in June and July 2022 when Felda acquired a cumulative 1.68 million FGV shares on the open market after an over four-month pause.

Felda, which had earlier proposed a takeover offer for the remaining shares in plantation outfit FGV, intends to delist FGV from Bursa Malaysia.

According to FGV's Bursa filing on Tuesday (July 5), Felda had acquired the 1.68 million FGV shares in four tranches comprising one each on June 29, June 30, last Friday (July 1) and Monday (July 4).

FGV said Felda had acquired 175,800 FGV shares on June 29 followed by 500,000 shares each on June 30, last Friday (July 1) and Monday (July 4).

After the acquisitions, FGV said Felda raised its direct stake in FGV to 67.564%.  

Felda also owns an indirect FGV stake of 12.415%, which brings Felda's combined direct and indirect FGV stake to 79.979%, according to FGV.

Prior to the June and July 2022 transactions, the last time Felda purchased FGV shares was on Feb 9, 2022 during which Felda acquired 59,300 FGV shares on the open market, according to a FGV's Bursa filing on Feb 15, 2022.

In the filing, FGV said Felda owned a cumulative stake of 79.933% in FGV as at Feb 9, 2022 after the share buy.

The 79.933% stake comprised a 67.518% direct stake and a 12.415% indirect equity portion in FGV, according to FGV.

Felda had raised its FGV stake to current levels via open market purchases of the latter’s shares and after Felda proposed a takeover offer for the remaining shares in FGV on Dec 8, 2020 at RM1.30 each, according to FGV's Bursa filings.

FGV said the initial closing date for the acceptance of Felda's offer was on Feb 2, 2021, but Felda had extended the deadline for the acceptance of the offer thrice, after which the final closing date was fixed for March 15, 2021.

According to Felda's final closing date notice dated March 1, 2021 attached to FGV's Bursa filing on that day, Felda stated that it does not intend to maintain the listing status of FGV on the Main Market of Bursa.

"Accordingly, in the event the offeror (Felda) receives valid acceptances resulting in the offeror and its associates holding in aggregate 90% or more of the FGV shares (excluding treasury shares), an immediate announcement will be made by FGV.

"Upon such announcement, Bursa will suspend the trading in FGV shares immediately upon expiry of five market days from the closing date.

"Thereafter, the offeror will submit a request to FGV to take the necessary procedures to withdraw its listing status from the official list in accordance with Chapter 16 of the Listing Requirements," Felda said.

At Bursa's 12:30pm break on Friday, FGV's share price settled unchanged at RM1.49 for a market capitalisation of about RM5.44 billion.

FGV has 3.65 billion outstanding shares, according to the company's latest quarterly financial report.