WARSAW: Private equity fund CVC Capital Partners and some shareholders of Comarch SA has announced plans to buy out and delist the Polish software firm.
In response, the target’s shares jumped to a record.
In a planned bid that valued Comarch at 2.57 billion zloty (US$654mil), CVC and the Polish company’s founding family, including chief executive officer Anna Pruska, jointly said they intend to offer 315.4 zloty per Comarch share, 10% above Tuesday’s close.
The stock jumped by as much as 15%, advancing to the highest level since its 1999 listing.
The planned transactions are meant to facilitate Comarch’s international expansion, which will “involve significant financial outlays, at the expense of delivering the short-term results expected by stock market investors,” according to the bidders’ statement.
The announcement comes seven months after the death of Comarch founder Janusz Filipiak, who grew the company mainly by winning information technology jobs from Poland’s public sector. Since then, Pruska – his daughter – has refocused the company, cutting costs and terminating a costly eCommerce marketplace project. —Bloomberg
