William Hill and GVC holdings have reduced their proposed joint offer for Sportingbet to £485m from £530m in the wake of the bid target’s disappointing Q1s issued on Friday.
The Takeover Panel has now extended the deadline for the parties to submit a firm offer for a third time, from today until 5pm on 18 December.
The revised cash and share bid values each Sportingbet share at 56.1 pence, with Hill’s agreeing to pay 44.8 pence per share in cash, in combination with the final proposed Sportingbet dividend of 1.1 pence per share and 0.0435 new GVC shares per Sportingbet share.
The revised offer now contains a “mix and match” facility, under which Sportingbet shareholders could receive proportionately more cash or more GVC shares. This evening’s press release said that certain Sportingbet shareholders, including founder Mark Blandford, had stated a perference for receiving the maximum amount of new GVC shares available under this new proposal.
The parties had been discussing a deal valuing the company at £530m before reports surfaced last week that the takeover would be again be delayed due to problems arising from GVC’s financial constraints and that William Hill was negotiating a last-minute revision on price in the wake of Sportingbet’s 35% plummet in Q1 revenues.
The proposed deal would see senior bid partner Hill’s acquire Sportingbet’s prized Australia division and other parts of the business operating in lower-risk regulated markets, with GVC adding the remaining – mainly dot.com – businesses to the Turkish-language Superbahis business it bought from Sportingbet last year.
William Hill’s approach for Sportingbet’s regulated business follows a year after bitter rival Ladbrokes’ £460m bid for the whole group foundered upon regulatory concerns over the Superbahis business in Turkey, subsequently carved off and sold to GVC for a minimum consideration of £125m.
Hill’s has not yet provided detail on what other locally licensed parts of the Sportingbet business it would acquire should the proposed transaction complete, although it seems likely to add Spain, where Sportingbet is joint market leader for online sports betting under its Miapuesta.es brand.
Sportingbet is also paying gaming taxes ahead of licensing in Greece, where it is one of the two market leaders for online sports betting. Its other local licences are in Denmark, under its own brand and Centrebet.
Article written by Stephen Carter
