MediaRing ups Pacific Internet offer by 15 percent

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 22 June 2006 19:16

IT Industry - Deals

Singapore based VoIP service provider, MediaRing has raised the price of its cash offer for regional ISP, Pacific Internet, to $US9.50 from $SUS8.25 saying that the revised offer is final.
The new price represents a 47.1 percent premium over PacNet's closing share price before MediaRing disclosed its intentions in February, and a 18.6 percent premium over PacNet's closing share price on June 20, 2006.

Mr Koh Boon Hwee, executive director of MediaRing, said: "Given PacNet's share price performance in recent months and market uncertainty going forward, we believe our revised cash offer represents very good value for PacNet's shareholders."

MediaRing also announced a further and final extension of the expiration date of the offer until July 10, 2006. The offer had previously been scheduled to expire on June 26, 2006.

PacNet's share price closed at a high of $US8.99 on April 26, 2006 after MediaRing's initial announcement of the offer price, but the price of PacNet shares has since drifted down to close at US$8.01 on June 20.

MediaRing notes that its offer represents better value than either of two significant block sales of PacNet shares. "There have only been two significant block sales of PacNet shares within the last 15-month period: SembCorp's sale to Kingsville at an implied enterprise value to EBITDA multiple of 4.6x and Kingsville's subsequent sale to Vantage at an implied EV/EBITDA multiple of 5.6x. The revised offer is at a premium of 73.9 percent and 42.9 percent to those transactions, respectively, at an implied EV/EBITDA multiple of 8.0x."