08 Mar 2021

CI Capital has rejected an offer by Banque Misr to acquire a 90% stake in the company. The state-owned bank last month made the offer at EGP4.70/share, valuing the company at EGP4.7bn, but in a disclosure submitted to the EGX yesterday, CI’s board of directors said that the offer was too far below the valuation reached by its financial advisor Baker-Tilly Wahid Abdel Ghaffar & Co.

CI Capital’s shares closed yesterday at EGP4.58/share and have been trading in that band since Banque Misr said it wanted to hike its stake in the company to 90%. Sell-side analysts have set target prices for the share in the EGP5/share range, including EGP5.00 (Pharos), EGP5.20 (Prime) and EGP5.47 (HC).

Banque Misr currently owns a 24.7% stake in the financial services firm and now wants to purchase an additional 653mn shares, giving it 90% ownership. Banque Misr became CI Capital’s largest shareholder last August when it acquired an additional 11% stake.

CI is asking that the bank raise its offer price by 19% to EGP5.60/share if it wants to acquire a 90% stake. Baker Tilly’s fair value report priced the company’s shares at EGP5.60/share in case of acquiring more than 51% of shares, and at EGP5.73/share if buying up to 51%, valuing the firm anywhere between EGP5.6-5.73 bn. Al-Mal newspaper has reported that Banque Misr has no intentions to change the price for the purchase offer. (Source: Company Disclosure, Al-Mal Newspaper, Enterprise)