Shares in Dalata Hotel Group jumped over 4% after it was revealed that an unidentified investor tried to purchase as much as 14% of the company in recent days.
As reported by The Irish Independent, J.P. Morgan issued a "cleansing" filing to the stock market under financial rules, saying that an unnamed party hired it to act as a dealer-manager to intermediate the purchase of as much of €110 million worth of Dalata shares.
J.P. Morgan described the unnamed party as a "European corporate with multiple minority holdings", and the unnamed party planned to pay between €3.50 and €3.75 per share.
Several existing Dalata institutional shareholders were approached about selling some of their holdings to the unnamed party, the identity of which it is believed is not known to Dalata or its brokers.
The unnamed party ultimately chose not to go ahead with the purchase, due to being unable to generate sufficient selling interest at the price that it was willing to pay. According to Goodbody Stockbrokers, said price would have represented a premium of 1% to 8% to the year-to-date average closing price for Dalata's shares and a 12% to 20% premium on the year-to-date lows.
The Irish Independent quotes Goodbody analyst Paul Ruddy as saying, "Although a transaction did not take place, we believe this is supportive of valuation given there was new buyer interest and also because it would appear that sufficient existing shareholders were unwilling to sell at those levels."
Group Value
As reported by The Irish Examiner, the over 4% jump in Dalata's shares following the revelation that the unnamed party had tried to purchase as much as 14% of the company valued Dalata's shares at €3.54 each, resulting in the group being valued at approximately €780.7 million.
© 2021 Hospitality Ireland – your source for the latest industry news. Article by Dave Simpson. Click subscribe to sign up for the Hospitality Ireland print edition.
