Mobitel announces voluntary offer to acquire E-Channelling

Mobitel (Private) Limited, the mobile arm of Sri Lanka Telecom PLC, yesterday announced its entry to the country’s online doctor channelling business with a voluntary offer to acquire all the shares of E-Channelling PLC, the pioneer in the local market.   

Mobitel said it had already reached a share sale and purchase agreement with E-Channelling PLC’s majority shareholder – Senior Marketing System Asia (Pte.) Limited – to acquire its holding of 107 million shares, representing 87.6 percent of the issued shares of the company, at a price of Rs.6 per share. 

The E-Channelling share however closed at Rs.8.50 at yesterday’s trading, down 20 cents.
Along with that, Mobitel announced a voluntary offer to purchase all the remaining shares of E-Channelling PLC at the same price. E-Channelling has 122.1 million shares in issue. 

NDB Investment Bank has been appointed as the managers to the voluntary issue. 

Since it is a voluntary offer, both the buying and selling parties could avoid brokerages, unlike in the case of carrying out the transaction through a crossing and a subsequent mandatory offer. 

Interestingly, Senior Marketing System Asia (Pte.), a subsidiary of Japan’s SMS (Co) Ltd, announced its mandatory offer on E-Channelling in June 2014, at Rs.14 per share.  

Mobitel in a stock exchange filing said a detailed offer document giving the other relevant information including the period during which the offer would be kept open, will be forwarded to the board of directors and shareholders of E-Channelling PLC within 28 days of the filing.

Meanwhile, Mobitel’s competitor in the mobile telephony market, Dialog Axiata PLC, operates the other doctor channelling platform in the country in partnership with the Softlogic group’s Asiri Hospitals.