Friday 29 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR: Hap Seng Consolidated Bhd (Hap Seng), through its wholly-owned subsidiary Hap Seng Investment Holdings Pte Ltd, has made a voluntary partial cash offer to acquire 51% of Singapore-based Hafary Holdings Ltd (Hafary) at 24 cents (63 sen) per share or S$52.5 million (RM139.07 million).

The offer is for 219.58 million shares in Hafary, which has 429 million outstanding shares.The offer also represents a premium of 9% from Hafary’s last traded price of 22 cents  yesterday. The company has a a market capitalisation of S$94.38 million.

In the offer it revealed to Bursa Malaysia yesterday, Hap Seng said it is seeking to acquire a controlling interest in Hafary as it believes it would aid the group’s plan to expand in the region.

Hap Seng said Hafary and its subsidiaries are leading suppliers of premium tiles, stone, mosaic, wood flooring, quartz top and sanitary ware, and fittings in Singapore.

“Leveraging on their strong sourcing and procurement network, the company (Hafary) carries a wide variety of surfacing materials from Europe (mainly Italy and Spain) and Asia, and supplies to their customers at competitive prices,” Hap Seng said.

Hap Seng said the combination if its business with Hafary’s is expected to create strong “synergistic benefits”.

“Hap Seng is involved in [the] upstream segment of the building materials market while the company (Hafary) is a strong downstream candidate, being a distributor of internationally acclaimed brands and having a diversified customer portfolio and an established and extensive distribution network,” it said.

“Hafary can facilitate Hap Seng’s regional expansion to develop an integrated building materials business, having regard to it being a market leader in the tiles segment in the Singapore market, and its potential growth catalyst through emerging market presence in Vietnam and China,” it added.

Hafary’s major shareholders Low Kok Ann, Low See Ching, Dr Audrey Low Bee Lan and Ching Chiat Kwong have given an irrevocable undertaking to it to accept the offer, said Hap Seng.

The group also noted that it has no intention to introduce any major changes to Hafary’s business, redeploy its fixed assets, or discontinue the employment of Hafary’s employees, save in the ordinary course of the business.

 

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on December 31, 2014.

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