Boustead Singapore raises offer to S$0.95 per share to privatise real estate unit

BOUSTEAD Singapore : F9D 0% will raise the offer price to take its mainboard-listed real estate subsidiary Boustead Projects : AVM 0% private to S$0.95 per share from S$0.90 previously, with the revised offer price final, Boustead Singapore said in a bourse filing on Wednesday (Feb 22).

The announcement comes after investor protests on undervaluation.

In a letter to Boustead Singapore on Feb 16, the Securities Investors Association (Singapore) (Sias) called on the engineering services provider to raise its offer price, citing the discount to asset value then as “simply too large to ignore”.

Analysts had previously deemed Boustead Singapore’s original offer price of S$0.90 as “unattractive” and a deal that appeared to favour the parent company, following Boustead Singapore’s announcement of the proposed privatisation on Feb 6.

At S$0.90 per share, the original offer price represented 71.1 per cent of Boustead Projects’ last reported net asset value (NAV) of S$1.265 per share as of Sep 30, 2022.

The revised offer price of S$0.95 per share will now represent 75.1 per cent of Boustead Projects’ last reported NAV.

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Sias had called for an offer price that was on a par with Boustead Projects’ NAV in its Feb 16 letter, labelling such a move as “clearly justified”.

Boustead Singapore owns 54.9 per cent of Boustead Projects.

Both companies called for trading halts on Wednesday, pending the release of the announcement. Boustead Projects shares closed at S$0.99 on Tuesday, up 0.5 per cent or S$0.005, while shares of Boustead Singapore ended at S$0.86, down 1.7 per cent or S$0.015.