Astm says goodbye to the stock market. The takeover bid on the infrastructural holding launched by NAF 2, the vehicle owned by the Gavio family and the Ardian fund, closed with subscriptions of more than 89.13% of the shares subject to the offer, just enough to bring the stake into hand to the promoters to 95.54% of the capital. This means that at this point we will proceed with the obligation to purchase what has not yet been delivered. But in fact it is like having 100% of Astm already in hand. The goal has therefore been achieved. And this mainly thanks to the final blow: on 7 May, in fact, Naf 2 announced the increase in the OPA price to 28 euros from the previous 25.6 euros. A change sufficient to move the shareholders who already last Friday had allowed the consortium to exceed 90% of the capital.
In detail, the shares of the infrastructural group tendered were 59.66 million.
Loading…
At this point, therefore, the Gavio and Ardian family take full possession of the asset. A couple of months ago they turned to the market to buy 47.638% of the infrastructure holding that manages 5,500 kilometers of motorways in the world, mainly in Italy and Brazil (4 thousand kilometers) with the specific aim of redesigning the corporate structure and giving further impetus to guidelines. In fact, the operation responds to a fairly linear logic: for some time now, in the stock market, the shares of Astm were, in the opinion of its main investors, particularly undervalued and this, combined with the fact that the context favors the use of bank loans at rather advantageous conditions , pushed for delisting. Not only that, we also wanted to strengthen the role of reference shareholders to foster further opportunities for M&A and international growth, while minimizing costs and streamlining the decision-making process.
In this regard, our gaze is directed not only to Italy, but also to Northern Europe, the United States and South America, in particular to Brazil where, in a short time, the aim is to consolidate Ecorodovias. In Brazil, however, the list of potential opportunities is long. From a recent presentation to Astm analysts it emerges that in Brazil, only as regards the “federal” roads, about 12 projects are on the launch pad, worth a total of 109 billion Brazilian reals, equal to 16.7 billion euros. An important sum of which the holding, thanks to the presence in the country of Ecorodovias, expects to carve out a slice.
On the other hand, the takeover bid is the last piece of a mosaic that the reference shareholders have worked on for a long time. The reorganization process with a view to growth was started a couple of years ago. The first step was the entry of Ardian alongside the Gavio family in the chain of control and continued in the summer of 2019 with the shortening of the chain. In particular, a year and a half ago, in the name of the One Company model that aims at synergies between the concessionaire and the general contractor, the merger between Astm and the subsidiary Sias was completed, as soon as a public offer on the latter was concluded. A passage, at the time, which was particularly appreciated by the market since Astm had reached a value of 31.5 euros in July 2019. Price no longer touched. If you look at the operation from a purely financial point of view, taking a look at the price fluctuations in Piazza Affari of the motorway holding company in the last three years it actually emerges that from the maximum of 31.5 euros reached in July 2019, the stock is then slipped to 15.88 euros in the first days of March 2020, with the beginning of the pandemic from Covid 19 and then climbed back to around 20 euros in the months preceding the takeover bid. Hence the decision to say goodbye to the stock market with the new consideration which incorporates a premium of approximately 40.8% compared to the official price of 19.88 euros of last February 19, the date of the announcement of the offer. and 49.1% compared to the average of the previous six months. The operation, once completed, will have required an outlay close to 1.9 billion euros. And it will have redesigned the entire chain of control. Astm will in fact be 100% controlled by NAF and will in turn be controlled 50.5% by the Gavio family and 49.5% by the Ardian fund.