THE founder and chief executive of Second Chance Properties, Mohamed Salleh, and his family on Wednesday (Jul 10) proposed to privatise the company at S$0.30 per share in cash through a voluntary unconditional offer.
As at Wednesday, the company has an issued and paid-up share capital of about S$174.7 million, comprising 927.8 million shares. Salleh and his family own around 789.2 million shares in Second Chance, representing about 85.06 per cent of the total number of issued shares.
The offer price of S$0.30 per share represents a premium of about 39.5 per cent over Second Chance’s last traded price of S$0.215 on Jul 9, the last full trading day before the offer announcement. It is also at a slight 0.5 per cent discount to the group’s net asset value per share of S$0.3016 as at end-February.
It also represents premiums of about 40.8 per cent, 37 per cent, 33.3 per cent and 28.2 per cent over the one-month, three-month, six-month and 12-month volume-weighted average prices, respectively, up to and including the last trading date.
Salleh and his family said that they intend for the company to continue to develop and grow its existing businesses. They added that the offer presents shareholders with a “clean cash exit opportunity” to realise their investment at a premium without incurring brokerage and other trading costs.
Other reasons include the low trading liquidity of Second Chance’s shares, with average daily trading volumes representing less than 0.01 per cent of the total issued shares as at Jul 10. Additionally, the company has incurred costs related to maintaining its listing status which could be avoided if delisted.
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Salleh was one of Ng Kok Song’s assentors when the latter ran for presidency last year. He also applied to contest in the 2017 presidential election but did not qualify to run.
Second Chance was listed on the Singapore Exchange’s mainboard in 2004, and its core businesses include property investment, retailing of apparel and gold jewellery, as well as investing in financial instruments.
Shares of Second Chance ended flat at S$0.215 on Tuesday. The company called for two trading halts on Wednesday, once before the market opened and another after it released the announcement.
