GVC set to seal bwin.party acquisition within days
Bwin.party enters final negotiations to complete deal after 110p per share proposal
GVC Holdings is poised to acquire bwin.party in the coming days after the beleaguered firm committed to final negotiations following a 110p per share proposal valuing it at just over £900m.
Bwin.party announced this morning that it had received the proposal and had “determined to work with GVC” to formalise an offer within days, seemingly ending 888’s hopes of clinching a deal to buy the operator.
GVC and bwin.party both released RNS statements confirming the former had made an proposal for the entire outstanding and issued share capital of bwin.party, however they said there was no guarantee a formal offer would be made.
“Any offer made by GVC for bwin.party would include part of the consideration in new GVC shares,” Kenneth Alexander, chief executive of GVC Holdings, said.
“Based on our experience with the successful Sportingbet acquisition and restructuring, we believe that the potential combination of GVC and bwin.party would result in substantial financial and operating synergies and represent an excellent opportunity for both GVC and bwin.party shareholders,” he added.
Today’s announcement follows recent confirmation from the operator of a joint-bid with Amaya Gaming to acquire the entirety of bwin.party, a bid the Financial Times earlier this week reported valued bwin.party at £900m.
Neither GVC or bwin.party made reference to Amaya’s involvement in the deal this morning.
In a separate pre-close trading update released by bwin.party this morning, the operator announced gaming revenue was in-line with the company’s expectations while sports betting turnover suffered from weak gross win margins.
Bwin.party CEO Norbert Teufelberger said he was pleased with the operator’s performance for the six months ended 30 June and expects the firm to have achieved at least 15m in cost savings by the end of 2015 due to its new label-led structure.
“Despite challenging comparatives together with the impact of EU VAT and POC tax, we are pleased with our business performance in the first half,” Teufelberger said.
“We have completed our new organisational set-up and streamlined our decision-making processes, significantly improving our operational performance,” he added. “We remain confident about the prospects for the second half and the outlook for our business.”
Bwin.party’s share price was up 2.32% to 101.4p on the London Stock Exchange at the time of writing.