By Sean Carney
PRAGUE--PPF Group NV, the Czech financial group owned by
billionaire Petr Kellner, Monday said it has acquired an additional
7.2% of outstanding shares in telecommunications company O2 Czech
Republic AS (BAATELEC.PR) in its mandatory buyout offer for
minority shares, lifting its stake to 73.1% and its voting rights
to 74.4%.
The company's stake in O2 CR has not reached the 90% level
required to launch an additional share buyback and so minority
shareholders will still be able to buy and sell the stock on the
Prague Stock Exchange.
However, PPF said in the buyback that ended June 30 it rejected
offers equal to 8.9% of the company's total shares due to technical
shortcomings.
"It will be interesting to see what the rejected investors will
do next. We can imagine slight selling pressure," said Milan
Vanicek, analyst at J&T Bank in Prague, who has a sell
recommendation and target price of 305 koruna ($15.1) on the
company's shares.
At 0824 GMT, O2 Czech Republic shares were trading down 0.8% on
the day at CZK265.5.
In January, PPF Group bought its 65.9% stake in the company from
Spain's Telefonica SA (TEF) for 2.06 billion euros ($2.82 billion)
outright and for an additional EUR303 million over the following
four years.
In May, PPF Group approved a 295.15 koruna ($14.72) offer for
each outstanding share. However, that was below the then-market
price for the stock and also below the CZK305.63-per-share purchase
price that PPF paid for the company in January, and so minority
shareholders didn't flock en masse to the buyout offer.
PPF Group carried out the buyout of minority shareholders
through its Dutch-registered subsidiary PPF Arena 2 BV.
Write to Sean Carney at sean.carney@wsj.com
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