Industrials REIT is the subject of a £500m possible cash offer from US private equity giant Blackstone – 42.4% above its closing price on Friday.
The company announced today that, following a period of extensive negotiations, it had reached agreement with Blackstone on the key financial terms of a final proposal for a possible cash offer.
Under the terms of the offer, Industrials REIT shareholders would receive 168 pence per ordinary share in cash. This represents a premium of 42.4% to the closing price of 118.0 pence on 31 March 2023; and 40.6% to the Industrials REIT one-month volume weighted average share price of 119.5 pence on 31 March 2023.
This is also a slight premium to its last reported net asset value of 166 pence (or an EPRA NTA per share of 162 pence) on 30 September 2022.
The board of Industrials REIT intends to recommend the financial terms of the final offer to shareholders, should a firm intention to make an offer comes – which it has until 1 May to do but both companies have said should come by 14 April.
The directors of Industrials REIT own 18,707,810 shares, representing around 6.3% of the issued share capital of Industrials REIT and intend to vote in favour of the offer.
In early trading, the share price of Industrials REIT is up nearly 40%.
[QD comment: This just goes to show that the market valuations that some of the listed property companies languish on (with extremely wide discounts to NAV) are not appropriate. Sectors, such as the industrial and logistics sector, still have compelling occupational supply-demand characteristics despite the blip in valuations over the past six to nine months as interest rates have risen and yields moved out. The market seems to have over-priced the impact of valuations on the whole of the property sector, leaving very well-run companies in strong sub-sectors on large discounts and open to private investment. I’m sure this won’t be the last take-private deal we will see this year, but it will be interesting to see if market valuations improve across the sector (especially in the industrial and logistics sub-sector) if this deal goes through.]
MLI : Industrials REIT agrees £500m sale of company