The deadline for the proposed take-private of Daisy Group by a consortium led by Daisy CEO and founder Matt Riley has been extended to 5.00pm on 20th October 2014, by which time the consortium must either announce a firm intention to make an offer for Daisy in accordance with Rule 2.7 of the Code, or announce that they do not intend to make an offer for Daisy, in which case the announcement will be treated as a statement to which Rule 2.8 of the Code applies.
A statement released today said, 'This statement is being made by the Company without the prior agreement of the Consortium and there can be no certainty that a firm offer will be made, nor as to the terms on which any offer might be made.'
In September Riley made a tentative take-private approach for the business at 190p per share backed by investors Toscafund and Penta Capital.
At the time Philip Carse, Principal Analyst, Megabuyte, said: "A 190p offer would value Daisy's equity at about £490m, giving an enterprise value of £600m, or about 10.3x current year consensus EBITDA. This is comfortably above the 6-9x of most of its UK B2B peers, though below Alternative Networks M&A-boosted 13.2x (though still 11.3x financial year 15).
"One clue to what Daisy may seek to do if privately owned comes from the other UK comms holdings of its backers - Phoenix IT and Six Degrees. A combination of the three would create a £600m UK business comms and IT player, behind only BT and Vodafone/CWW."