(Alliance News) - Lookers PLC on Tuesday reaffirmed its board's support for a takeover offer, while reporting lower half-year profit.
The Manchester-based car sales and service chain reported pretax profit of GBP40.4 million for six months that ended June 30, down 19% from a restated GBP49.9 million a year before, despite an 8.0% rise in revenue to GBP2.42 billion from GBP2.24 billion.
On an underlying basis, pretax profit edged down 2.3% to GBP46.1 million from GBP47.2 million.
Chief Executive Officer Mark Raban called it a good trading performance in the face of macroeconomic headwinds.
The board unanimously recommends the takeover offer from Global Auto Holdings Ltd, Raban said. "The offer is in the best interests of all shareholders and provides an opportunity to crystallise, in cash, the value of their investments," he said.
Global Auto is the bidding vehicle of Alpha Auto Group Holdings LP, a Toronto-based operator of auto retail dealerships across North America. It is offering 130 pence per Lookers share in cash. A previous offer of 120p had failed.
Lookers shares were trading unchanged at 129.00p in London early Tuesday.
Global Auto on Tuesday said its offer has acceptance representing 22.3% of Lookers shares, down from 22.6% at the end of last week. Global Auto received a letter of intent to accept the offer from JO Hambro Capital Management Ltd for its stake, which stood at 8.0% in June. However, since then JO Hambro has been selling Lookers shares, whittling down the level of acceptances.
Lookers has called a shareholder meeting for September 5 to approve the offer.
Lookers previously announced a 1.00p per share interim dividend, unchanged from a year before, and Global Auto confirmed the dividend payment won't be taken off its offer price.
By Tom Waite, Alliance News editor
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