At a price of €2.85 per share amounting to a premium of approximately 10.7%, means should the deal go ahead will see Marbles acquire the company for approximately 164.3 million shares at €468.2 million ($569.6 million).
This is of course the full purchase price and does not account for Marbles’ existing 47.2 million shares, equivalent to 28.7% stake of Retelit. Meaning its 71.3% shortfall will amount to roughly €333.6 million ($405.8 million) and amount to approximately 117 million shares.
In a statement, Marbles said that Retelit presents "an unparalleled strategic opportunity" to enter the Italian telecommunications market with a "growing independent digital platform".
Adding that once the takeover bid has closed, “it intends to fully support Retelit’s business plan and development plans” as well as ’to contribute to the growth of the broadcaster by leveraging its experience in the communications sector and to work with the management of Retelit in order to achieve some of the growth objectives set by the issuer’s strategy disclosed to the public”.
Looking ahead, Asterion “does not exclude the possibility of evaluating the implementation of extraordinary operations and/or corporate reorganisations’ further than the possible merger of Retelit and businesses deemed appropriate.”
In related news, May saw Retelit named as one of the signartories of an investment roadmap submitted to The European Commission, outlining technological priorities in cloud and edge.
Joining the likes of Orange, DE-CIX, Deutsche Telekom at Ericsson, all 27 companies aim to strengthen Europe's leadership in cloud and edge technologies and have agreed to continue working together to further develop the strategic technology roadmap in the framework of the upcoming Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud, due to launch in Q2, 2021.
