Procurri shares jump on offer from second interested buyer

Singapore

SHARES of enterprise hardware supplier Procurri Corporation jumped by around 8 per cent or 2.5 cents to close at 33.5 Singapore cents on Thursday on news that it had on Feb 4 received a second unsolicited, non-binding expression of interest from a third party to acquire the company through a possible voluntary general offer.

This is subject to due diligence being conducted. Some 550,000 Procurri shares changed hands on Thursday.

Procurri added that to the best of its knowledge, the second offeror is not in any way related to a proposed acquisition via a scheme announced on Feb 3 by New State Capital Partners LLC.

On Monday, Procurri had named its first offeror, saying it has received a non-binding letter of intent from New State Capital Partners for the proposed acquisition of all the shares of the company, other than treasury shares and shares held by substantial shareholder Irrucorp, via a scheme of arrangement.

New State is a private investment firm which operates in the US and focuses on investments in business, healthcare and industrial services industries.

Irrucorp, in which Procurri chairman and global CEO Sean Murphy, and executive director and global president Edward Flachbarth are deemed to have interests, owns about 12.03 per cent of the company as at March 16, 2018, according to Procurri's 2017 annual report.

In early January, disclosures revealed that Catalist-listed DeClout had sold 48 million shares in Mainboard-listed Procurri at S$0.32 per share to two independent third parties, raising net proceeds of S$15.2 million.

DeClout did not identify the buyers. The sale was done through married deals and the sale price represents a premium of 14.4 per cent to the volume-weighted average price of S$0.2797 traded on Jan 3, being the last market day on which Procurri shares were traded prior to the sale.