By Scott Murdoch and Sameer Manekar
Feb 16 (Reuters) – Shares of Australia’s Qube Holdings shot to a record high on Monday after it agreed to an A$11.7 billion ($8.26 billion) buyout offer from a consortium led by Macquarie Asset Management (MAM) to take the logistics firm private.
Qube shares jumped as much as 4.1% in early trading to an all-time high of A$5.05. The stock remained below the consortium’s A$5.20 a share offer.
The agreement follows months of talks after a MAM-led consortium made a non-binding offer in November for Qube, which gave the company an enterprise value of A$11.6 billion. Qube owns ports, intermodal terminals and bulk handling facilities across Australia.
Qube’s board recommended its investors vote in favour of the deal at a shareholder meeting that is due to be held later this year. The transaction requires Australian competition and foreign investment regulatory approval.
“Qube is a really great reflection of the Australian economy, if you think what is driving the Australian economy, a lot of the volume is similar to what Qube’s volume is,” said Ani Satchcroft, MAM’s co-head of infrastructure for Asia-Pacific.
“It’s imports such as containers and vehicles, and then export demand across things like resources and agriculture, for us that macroeconomic reflection was a really big attraction of Qube.”
Australian pension fund UniSuper, Qube’s largest investor with a 15.1% stake, and Pontegadea, the family office of Spain’s Ortega family, which is known for controlling global clothing company Inditex, joined the Macquarie consortium. Fast fashion retailer Zara is an Inditex subsidiary.
UniSuper began increasing its stake by buying Qube shares on the open market after Macquarie’s bid was first unveiled in November.
“There will be more public-to-private transactions,” John Pearce, UniSuper’s chief investment officer, told Reuters.
“There’s a feeling that in a private vehicle, there is more of an opportunity to actually take longer-term investment decisions.”
Under a scheme implementation deed, the Sydney-based firm can pay dividends of up to a maximum of 40 Australian cents, which will result in a reduction in the offer price, both Qube and MAM said.
($1 = 1.4172 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Scott Murdoch in Sydney, Sameer Manekar and John Biju in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore, Diane Craft and Sonali Paul)
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