Quick update: Osram Special situation
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOU OWN RESEARCH.
Ouch, another day, another problem. Yesterday, one of my Special situation stocks Osram lost around -7%.
What happened: The largest shareholder Allianz Global Investors (AGI) announced that they do not support the offer as they consider the price of 35 EUR per share as too low.
A few observations from my side:
- AGI had purchased more Osram shares in the past few months. Beginning in July they announced that they crossed the 10% threshold
- However in their press release they talk about >9% stake so they have sold shares in the past 4 weeks, clearly at a price of lower than 35 EUR. So while AGI is critisizing Osram managment for not believing in their company, AGI (or parts of them) also seems to have some problems in believing their own investment thesis.
- The press release reads like a marketing pitch for their “active management approach” with high fees which clearly is under threat from passive startegies
- They state that “at the moment they would not accept the offer” which in my opinion is not a super hard statement and we are relatively early in the acceptance period
- Although AGI states that that they are investors since the initial listing (which is natural if you had owned Siemens shares which they surely had), in various articles it has been mentioned that AGI’s average purchase price is much higher than the 35 EUR offered as they seemd to have increased their position significantly when the stock still went up.
- As the basis for their current opinion they use an “independent fairness opinion”. Why do they need that ?
