Marwyn sets lowball price for partial offer – Marwyn Value Investors has released an update to its partial offer (announced on 3 January 2019). The price range for the partial offer has been set at 125p to 135p per ordinary share. Marwyn still intends to purchase £5m worth but says it does reserve the right to increase or reduce this having determined the total number of shares offered for sale during the reverse bookbuild process.
[QD comment: The stated aim of the partial offer is to close the discount to NAV – the bid price for shares in the market is 121p and the NAV is something close to 192p (the level that it was on 28 December 2018). It now seems as though the narrowest discount that the offer will consider buying shares at is 30%. The median discount in the UK small cap sector is 6%. It looks more like the manager is trying to pick up shares on the cheap than trying to narrow the discount. By increasing its control of the company, it reduces the chance that any third party shareholder could encourage a more meaningful narrowing of the discount. This partial offer may prove counterproductive.]
MVI : Marwyn sets lowball price for partial offer