Boral Ltd has despatched the bidder’s statement for its offer for Adelaide Brighton Ltd. Under the offer, ABC shareholders will receive A$1.55 in cash from Boral for each ABC share, which will be increased to A$1.60 if Boral at least 90 per cent of ABC shares and the offer becomes unconditional. Boral points out that the independent directors of ABC, Malcolm Kinnaird, chairman, Chris Harris, Mark Chellew, managing director and Les Hosking recommend that ABC shareholders accept the offer, in the absence of a superior offer. They will accept the offer for their personal shareholdings in ABC, in the absence of a superior offer.
Boral says offer price of A$1.55 per ABC share capitalises the company at A$840 million and represents an attractive premium to ABC¹s recent trading prices. It is 36 per cent above to the closing price of ABC shares of A$1.14 on December 15, 2003, the day before the announcement of the offer. It is 29 per cent above the volume-weighted average trading price of ABC shares of A$1.20 in month the before the offer was announced. The price represents an enterprise value to EBITDA multiple of 8.7 times ABC¹s EBITDA for the year ended December 31, 2002. It represents an enterprise value to EBITA multiple of 11.6 times ABC¹s EBITA for the same period. Boral says these multiples represent an attractive premium to the trading multiples of comparable Australian and New Zealand based building materials and construction materials companies.
