(Reuters) – Australia’s Link Administration Holdings Ltd on Monday said it was unable to recommend Canadian software firm Dye & Durham Ltd’s revised takeover bid of A$4.57 per share, but will continue to engage with it to obtain a better offer.
The rejection comes just days after Link said it would consider the revised bid, which values it at A$2.34 billion ($1.60 billion).
The latest bid was upped from Dye & Durham’s (D&D) prior offer of A$4.30 apiece, which was itself slashed by nearly a quarter from the original proposal of A$5.50 per share made in December.
D&D cut the initial offer late last month citing reduction in market valuation of the share registry firm as well as of the electronic conveyancing firm PEXA Group Ltd, in which Link owns about 43%.
For nearly two years, Link’s stake in PEXA has attracted multiple buyout offers from global investment firms Carlyle Group Inc and KKR & Co Inc, as well as a failed bid by a consortium that included Carlyle.
Shares of Link and PEXA are down 16% and 9.4%, respectively, since the first offer by D&D was made on Dec. 22.
Link is also awaiting D&D’s undertaking to the Australian competition regulator to satisfy its concerns regarding impact to competition if the deal were to go through, it said.
Separately, Link said https://bit.ly/3nUed2M its preliminary fiscal 2022 revenue came in at A$1.18 billion, higher than last year’s A$1.16 billion. It expects a low single-digit percentage growth in fiscal 2023 revenue, it said.
($1 = 1.4594 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Tom Hogue and Christopher Cushing)
