The Kudelski Group has launched a new bid to acquire OpenTV, offering $1.55 per share for the middleware provider, a 20 cent mark up on the offer rejected in June by the company’s Special Committee as being ‘inadequate’.
In a statement Kudelski said its all cash offer provides OpenTV shareholders “immediate liquidity at a superior value to OpenTV’s future prospects, particularly given OpenTV’s current scale and R&D challenges and the significant amount of new investment required for OpenTV to remain competitive as a standalone, publicly-traded company”. It goes onto repeat Kudelski’s ability to invest in R&D in the context of what it describes as an “intensely competitive environment”.
The offer, which values OpenTV at around $215 million (€154m), is scheduled to run until November 6. Kudelski and subsidiaries currently own around 13.4% of OpenTV’s Class A shares and 100% of the Class B shares. This gives the Swiss technology company 32.3% of the total outstanding shares of OpenTV and 77.2% of the voting power of OpenTV’s shares.
The largest independent shareholder in OpenTV is the Chicago-based Discovery Group. In June the merchant banker called for Kudelski to buy back the shares it had previously acquired at $1.35 a share.
Kudelski has also opened up a website at www.opentvvalue.com to put its case for the acquisition.
