Fortum Rebuffed on Uniper Offer

Fortum has announced a disappointingly low uptake in its tender for Uniper shares that closed midnight German time overnight between January 16 and 17.

Many investors saw its offer price of €22/share as well below the market price earlier this week; indeed Uniper shares were still trading at €25.30 at 10.30am German time (9.30am GMT) January 19.

Finnish utility Fortum said January 19 that the number of shares tendered during the initial acceptance period of Fortum's voluntary public takeover offer for the outstanding shares of Uniper totalled 171,736,647 shares, corresponding to only 46.93% of the share capital and the voting rights of Uniper. 

E.ON announced January 8 that it had tendered its entire 170.72mn share holding in Uniper (46.65% of Uniper share capital) to Fortum, and said that its management would also tender their shares. But E.ON would have faced a penalty of about 20% of the €22 price, had it decided not to tender - following an agreement with Fortum in November.

Fortum added: "Uniper shareholders who have not yet tendered their shares to the offer within the initial acceptance period can still tender during the additional acceptance period beginning on  January 20 2018 and ending February 2 2018 at 24:00 CET (local time in Frankfurt am Main), pursuant to the statutory provisions of the German Securities Acquisition and Takeover Act (WpUG). Fortum expects to publish the total amount of shares tendered on February 7 2018."

Uniper has consistently said the Fortum offer, equivalent to €8.05bn for 100% of Uniper, undervalued its company.

Uniper CEO Klaus Schafer said: "We are pleased that the vast majority of our shareholders follow our vote and have not accepted Fortum's offer. Only 0.28% of the free shares were tendered to Fortum. That was to be expected... The additional acceptance period is, however, expected to continue until February 2 2018. Only then will we see how many shares will finally change hands."

Fortum had said in November it expected to finalise its takeover in mid-2018. Now though it may be under pressure to improve its offer price, given the almost nil uptake from the open market.