KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 26): The Federal Land Development Authority (Felda) has raised its stake in plantation giant FGV Holdings Bhd to 81.901%, after acquiring 4.3 million shares of the plantation company on the open market.
The open market purchase on Jan 18 raised Felda’s direct stake in FGV to 69.486% or 2.535 billion shares, according to FGV’s filing with Bursa Malaysia on Thursday (Jan 26). Felda also owns an indirect stake of 12.415% or 452.92 million shares in FGV.
Prior to the latest acquisition, Felda bought five million FGV shares in December last year, bringing its stake to 81.783%.
Felda had been mopping up shares in FGV since its failed attempt to privatise the company at RM1.30 per share in March 2021. The agency could only increase its interest in FGV to 81% when the offer closed, way off the 90% ownership to trigger the compulsory share acquisition to take FGV private.
Felda paused its acquisition spree in February 2022 when FGV’s share price rose, along with the high crude palm oil price (CPO). The daily prices of CPO exceeded RM5,000 at that time. Four months later, in June, the agency resumed its acquisition of FGV shares.
FGV had previously sought exemption from Bursa Malaysia to comply with the 25% public shareholding spread to remain listed on Bursa, but the last exemption expired on Aug 3, 2022.
There was still no sign of resolution after three requests for exemption for six months each, while Felda continued to buy more FGV shares in the open market.
FGV’s public shareholding spread was at 13.06% as at Nov 21, 2022.
In a Nov 30 filing, FGV said its board has been in regular discussions with its major shareholder (Felda) over the past several months and has appointed an advisor to explore various options to address the non-compliance with the public spread requirement.
FGV has one “buy”, eight “hold” and one “sell” calls with a 12-month target price of RM1.43 among analysts, Bloomberg data showed.
FGV’s share price closed at RM1.32 on Thursday, valuing the company at RM4.82 billion. The counter has fallen 12% over the past year.