Member Info for driveat15

I don’t expect an RNS about any offer before the 29th.
I expect it will be published 7am on 29th, along with the interim results.

Trading Update was delayed but publishing of interim results is still scheduled for 29th.

https://news.sky.com/story/aa-auctions-risks-stalling-as-rivals-eye-joint-offer-12060623

There has not been an announcement of a possible 3bn bid.

The only official announcements so far is the one from 4th Aug which says
“There can be no certainty that any offer will be made for the Company, nor as to the terms on which any offer might be made.”

The rumoured 3bn bid from Apollo is exactly that - a rumour. Quoted by Sky News, but not acknowledged by either AA or Apollo.

Nothing is certain.

Most likely is that we will get an RNS on Tuesday saying the Rule 2.6 deadline has been extended by 28 days to 29-Sep. But we should at least find out who is still in discussions.

I ersonally don’t expect any bid to be finalised until the interim results are announced on 29-Sep.

But nothing is certain.

Wow, such impatience!

Takeover bids can take several months from an initial “potential offer” statement to announcement of a firm bid or no intention to bid.

BillCn I agree.

I suspect we will just get a deadline extension on Sept 1st and that the bid will be announced on 29th Sep along with the interim results.

Time will tell :)

Yep. Topped up today on the dip.

First RUMOURED bid level was 40p, rumoured AFTER the 3 potential bidders had been named by AA in the RNS of 4th August.

Possible 4th bidder (Apollo) was identified in a Sky News story with a rumoured bid of £3 billion.
But that’s just a nice round figure. I’d call 2.9 billion 3 billion. I’d also call 3.1 billion 3 billion.
I don’t think it’s right to calculate a 56p potential offer price on the basis of a vague news story.

At the moment there has been no official confirmation of Apollo’s interest from either Apollo or the AA.

Any “ bidding war” is likely to go on behind the scenes and be resolved before the best bid (if any) is announced and recommended to shareholders by the board.
It is extremely unlikely that we will see multiple actual bids announced.

1st September is not a hard deadline.

Initially the Takeover Panel give bidders 28 days to “put up or shut up” (PUSU) but it is VERY common for this rule 2.6 deadline to be extended by a further 28 days, then another and another if necessary.

As long as the potential bidder and the company being bid for both agree an extension is required the Takeover Panel are normally happy to extend.

Offer MIGHT be coming at any time. I’d be surprised if it was early as this weekend.

The “deadline” of 1st Sep doesn’t mean an offer has to come by that date. It is very common for these deadlines to get extended in blocks of 28 days at a time.

My personal opinion is that the 1st Sep deadline will be extended and we will see a bid announced with the interim results on 29th Sep.

I also don’t think we will see multiple bids. The discussions/ negotiations will go on behind closed doors and the Board will announce the one preferred bid for shareholders to vote on. One or more of the potential bidders may be eliminated before the deadline gets extended.

Apollo isn’t currently subject to any deadline as they have not been officially identified as a potential bidder (only a Sky News story, no RNS from either Apollo or AA related to Apollo and they are not included in the Panel of Takeovers and Mergers (POTAM) disclosure table.

So my prediction - 29th September and the offer will be 48-50p.
I am a holder and I’d love to see a higher bid, but I think many of the estimates on here are sadly just wishful thinking.

Hastings are currently being taken over themselves.

Don’t see them launching a takeover bid for AA while that is going on - it would get very complicated!

It’s not unusual for the “Put up or shut up” (PUSU) deadline to be extended by another 28 days, then another 28 days as needed.

It needs to be wit the agreement of the target company (AA in this case) the potential bidder(s) and the Takeover Panel’s, but it happens quite often to allow proper time to finalise the details.
Once the bidder has made a firm bid they are pretty much committed to following through except in very specific circumstances so they need to get it right before they announce.

These things can’t be rushed, worth waiting for ??

I wouldn’t be so sure they were sells. They were reported late (trades just after 2pm but reported at close). The buy/sell prices quoted are those at close, not at the time of the trades and I’ve seen my own trades reported on the wrong side of buy/sell in the past.

If someone had really sold or bought that many shares around 2:15 it would have had an effect on the price (either way) but there was no significant jump/drop.

Much more likely is it was a matched trade - someone agreed to sell 5 million shares to somebody else who agreed to buy them at an agreed price - so the net effect was 0. Also explains why the price was the same. If somebody had sold 5 million shares then a few minutes later went to sell another 5 million I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t get offered the same price Now the broker was overflowing with stock.

Hopefully we will see Form 8.3s tomorrow showing who sold and who bought, but each transaction was under the 1% reporting threshold so, unless it really was one holder selling (or buying) both lots we may not find out. Unless the seller and or buyer held more than 1% in total before selling or after buying.

Lol :).
Nope, just a GMS shareholder watching with interest.

Not long til the GM at noon today.

I’d also missed this Press Release by SeaFox on the 30th July

STATEMENT REGARDING GULF MARINE SERVICES PLC 30.07.2020
30 July 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Seafox International Limited

Statement re Gulf Marine Services PLC (GMS)

On 30 June 2020 GMS announced that they had asked for confirmation that Seafox is not a concert party with any other shareholder. Following that announcement, Seafox has co-operated with the relevant authorities in providing evidence of its relationship with the other shareholders who voted against certain resolutions at the GMS 2020 AGM. The relevant authorities have not treated Seafox as acting in concert with these other shareholders.

Seafox is surprised that GMS decided to make public its request for Seafox to confirm they are not in concert with any other GMS shareholder with no evidence of any such concertedness other than the fact that a number of shareholders decided to vote together against the board recommendations. Seafox believes that GMS itself will have spent a considerable amount of time and effort trying to persuade shareholders to vote with the board and, of course, shareholders decided for themselves as to how to vote. The only relevant fact here is that 58% of shares voted did not support the GMS board.

Seafox urges the board to consider their duties to the company and to all shareholders – a majority of whom actually voted at the AGM decided not to support them.

Well, you got your hope redeyemines ??
We bought into further assets which will generate more income for the future!
Only we didn’t buy, we got 10% for free.
Well, better than free - they pay us 14% interest on the money we lend them.

Looks like a cracking deal.

Interesting that GMS has just said they will interim results in the morning, just hours before the GM.

On the other hand ....

The Board only got refreshed last year BECAUSE of SeaFox’s actions in buying astake and calling a GM last year. The general consensus seems to be that the new Board have done a lot to turn GMS around. If SeaFox hadn’t agitated last year and the old board was still in place where would GMS be now?

Several large shareholders have been persuaded that cash now was more attractive than staying invested and have “jumped ship” - most of SeaFox’s stake building in the past few months has been achieved by buying out big stakes at both 10p and 22p.

The Board can no longer claim support from more than 50% of shares - Mazrui’s 12.65% was previously included in support of the Board as they had written a letter of support, but they voted against the Board at the AGM. Some of the large stakes SeaFox has purchased (such as the 22million at 22p) have probably come out of that support as well, although strangely the sellers have not filed TR-1 notifications as they should have for changes in major holdings.

SeaFox hold 29.99% of the shares and have requested Board representation of 2 directors out of 7 - that equates to 28.6% of the voting power of the Board to represent their views as 29.99% shareholders. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.

Far from not attending the AGM or not reading news releases I think you’ll find SeaFox are following events at GMS VERY closely! They have invested a lot already in building their stake and have been agitating for change for around 18 months now.

Since SeaFox were instrumental in causing the Board to be refreshed last year, and since the share price was languishing before SeaFox’s recent renewed interest, I for one think we have a lot to thank SeaFox for.

GM to vote on SeaFox’s proposed 2 nominees to the Board has been scheduled for 12 noon on 4th August.

Interesting snippet in the notice is that SeaFox now hold 105,111,287 shares which is 29.99% - the maximum they can hold without having to make a mandatory offer.
This means they have continued to add shares since the two big 22p purchases. They have added almost another 3m shares since then.

They do seem determined.