(Alliance News) - A shareholder in Currys PLC has called on the consumer electronics seller to dispose of its mobile phone service division, The Sunday Times reported.
Fund manager JO Hambro said Currys should sell ID Mobile, a business which provides monthly phone contracts, the report claimed.
The Sunday Times said the division is valued at around GBP350 million.
JO Hambro holds a 4.5% stake in Currys and is the eighth-largest shareholder in Currys, the newspaper noted.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/shareholder-urges-currys-to-offload-mobile-phones-arm-j2s6mdkj3
In March, Elliott Advisors announced it will not make an official bid for Currys, after having made a roughly GBP750 million proposal. JD.com, another potential bidder for Currys, also said it would not be making a bid.
In a letter to its investors last week, Hambro said it had upped its stake since the suitors went away, the Sunday Times said.
But Hambro added: "The pressure will now be on the board to realise shareholder value, where our favoured option would remain the sale of ID Mobile."
Hambro pointed out that one of the reasons the Currys bids had failed was that some investors "were very clear on the minimum acceptable value for this business", the newspaper reported.
Shares in Currys were up 0.8% to 62.55 pence in London on Monday morning. The stock is up 33% since mid-February, when the potential bids were revealed.
In its current form, Currys is the product of a 2014 merger of electronics seller Dixons Retail and mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse. In 2020, the company closed all of its remaining standalone Carphone Warehouse stores in the UK, and the following year, it changed the company's name to Currys.
By Jeremy Cutler, Alliance News reporter
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