Abano board rebuffs revised bid

Takeover target Abano Healthcare has advised shareholders to reject an increased partial offer and rebuffed the bidder’s request for due diligence access to its books.

Healthcare Partners Holdings, controlled by Peter and Anya Hutson and James Reeves, wants to increase its stake from 19% to 50.01% through an offer of $10 a share.

The $10 price represents an increase of 16c from its initial offer to take account of a dividend paid by Abano in January.

In a statement to the NZX this morning, Abano’s board said it considered the risks of the partial takeover outweighed the higher offer price because Healthcare Partners had not clarified how it intended to run the company.

 “Our advice to shareholders is to reject the revised offer. To do this, shareholders should simply ignore the offer documents from Healthcare Partners and do nothing,” Abano chairman Trevor Janes said.

“The board is not soliciting bids for Abano and therefore unanimously rejects the suggestion from Peter Hutson, Anya Hutson and James Reeves that Abano should open up the company to allow due diligence by Healthcare Partners and other unspecified and as yet unidentified ‘interested parties’ to ‘explore the possibility of making a 100% offer’.”

Healthcare Partners yesterday said it would consider a 100% offer if Abano allowed access to its internal information for due diligence.

“We did not make a 100% offer because the Abano board has historically been unwilling to provide access to due diligence information, which we require to make a 100% offer. However, we have listened to shareholders and, if our partial offer is successful, we will allow due diligence to facilitate further credible offers,” it said.

“Whether or not our partial offer is successful, we invite the board of Abano to open a due diligence process for us and all other interested parties. We can then explore the possibility of making a 100% offer.”

Abano shares closed yesterday at $8.70, valuing the company at $186 million.

Abano’s main business is in dentistry and the company has been acquiring individual practices to build national brands on both sides of the Tasman. In New Zealand it runs the Lumino dental group and in Australia its practices are being gradually rebranded as Maven Dental.