MásMóvil makes Euskaltel bid
March 29, 2021
By Colin Mann
The Spanish telecoms sector looks set for further consolidation with the news that fourth-ranked operator MásMóvil has made a friendly takeover bid for Basque regional telco Euskaltel of some €2 billion.
In a statement to the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV), Spain’s stock market regulator, MásMóvil said that it had the agreement of shareholders who hold 52.32 per cent of the capital for the bid, which would see it pay €11.17 per share in cash, a premium of 26.8 per cent on the average price of the shares over the past six months, and a 16.48 per cent premium compared with Friday’s closing price.
“Therefore, the maximum amount to be disbursed by the MásMóvil group is close to 2 billion euros,” the company said. According to MásMóvil, the offer is conditional on achieving the acceptance of at least 75 per cent plus one share of the capital and obtaining all appropriate competition and regulatory authorisations.
“MásMóvil and Euskaltel together form a solid and complementary industrial project,” it said in the statement, suggesting that the deal would “accelerate the investments in infrastructures that are necessary in the current context and that will benefit Spanish consumers.
In documents submitted to the CNMV, MásMóvil said it approached the board of Euskaltel on March 15th with an offer to buy the company, reporting that the board of directors of Euskaltel “agreed on March 17th 2021 to consider the offer friendly and attractive” and that they had subsequently entered into an agreement in which they formalised the various arrangements reached in relation to the takeover bid.