Autostrada – the real Italian job !! (Holy Cow edition)
Holy Cow !! (pardon my French..).
After I posted last week about a potential “Italian Job” at Autostarda / SIAS with the sale of the South American activities, the real Italian job now emerged:
Autostrada just released a “breaking news item” that they intend to:
– buy in total 30% of the Italian construction company Impegrilo from it’s parent and Insurance company Fondiaria at a total amount of 237 mn EUR
– The purchase price is above the current market price of Impegrilo shares
– additionally, they want to increase their capital by up to 500 mn EUR which based on the current market cap of 620 mn EUR is a lot.
I have to admit that this is really unexpected and hard to value. In any case, it completely changes the investment case and I am inclined to directly sell the shares or exchange them into SIAS.
One thing is a little bit strange: They say that they pay above market price (3.65 EUR for the Fondriaria part and 3 EUR from the parent company) and spend 237 mn EUR in total. However, those 120 mn shares are actually worth something like 312 mn EUR at the current price of 2.66 EUR for Impgegilo.
Edit:
I have just seen that Fondiaria actually issued a press release in December 2011 about the first part of the transaction:
Argo Finanziaria S.p.A., Immobiliare Fondiaria-SAI S.r.l. and Immobiliare Milano Assicurazioni S.r.l. announce the signing today of the acquisition by Argo Finanziaria S.p.A. of 8,040,000 ordinary shares of IGLI S.p.A., held by Immobiliare Fondiaria-SAI S.r.l. and Immobiliare Milano Assicurazioni S.r.l. and comprising 33.33% of the share capital of IGLI S.p.A.. As previously reported, IGLI S.p.A. in turn holds 120,576,293 Impregilo S.p.A. ordinary shares – 29.96% of the share capital with voting rights. The acquisition price of each IGLI S.p.A. share subject to the agreement was established at Euro
10.89572, based on the forecast balance sheet of IGLI S.p.A. at December 31, 2011, with each ordinary share of Impregilo S.p.A. attributed a value of Euro 3.65.
Argo Finanziaria S.p.A. may designate its subsidiary Autostrada Torino Milano S.p.A. to acquire the IGLI S.p.A. shares held by Immobiliare Fondiaria-SAI S.r.l. and Immobiliare Milano Assicurazioni S.r.l. .
So this was not exectly “brand new” news, but this potential “designation” was never mentioned anywhere on Autostrada’s website.
So let’s wait and see what the stock does tomorrow. Maybe I was the only one who did not know about this…..
Quick update: After a short suspension, the stock now trades down “after hour” at around 6,90 EUR from 7,10 earlier on the day. So I will try to sell them tomorrow with a limit of 6,75 EUR per share.
EDIT: I decided to skip the limit and sell at today’s VWAP without limit. Sell first, ask questions later….