Silverlake Axis jumps 23.3% on privatisation offer

SHARES of Silverlake Axis surged above a one-year high after the enterprise technology company resumed trading on Tuesday (Aug 27) morning, following news of a privatisation offer from a group led by its chairman Goh Peng Ooi.

As at 10.08 am its share price was up 23.3 per cent to S$0.37 – a level not seen since it traded at around the same price in February 2023.

By 10.24 am it eased slightly to S$0.365, up S$0.065 or 21.7 per cent, but remained the top-traded counter in terms of volume with 37.1 million shares transacted.

No married deals were recorded in early trade, according to ShareInvestor data.

After calling for a trading halt on Monday, Silverlake Axis announced it had received a voluntary unconditional offer to privatise at S$0.36 in cash per share.

Shareholders may alternatively elect to receive a combination of S$0.30 per share in cash, together with one new redeemable preference share in the capital of the offeror, E2I, for each offer share.

The redeemable preference shares will be mandatorily redeemed five years from their issuance at the redemption amount of S$0.18 apiece. 

E2I is wholly owned by Silverlake Axis’ controlling shareholder Zezz FundQ (ZFPL), which in turn holds two classes of shares comprising 603 million ordinary shares and 8.3 million redeemable convertible preference shares (RCPS).

Goh holds 100 per cent of ordinary shares in ZFPL while the RCPS are held by Merit Sigma, which is wholly owned by a fund managed by Asean private equity fund manager Ikhlas Capital.

Based on publicly available information as at Aug 26, the company has an issued and paid-up capital of US$520.9 million comprising 2.5 billion shares.

The S$0.36 per share consideration therefore implies a cash outlay of about S$234.5 million.

Shares of Silverlake Axis closed at S$0.37 on Tuesday, after soaring 23.3 per cent or S$0.07.