30 December 2016 12:01 am
A share sale of significant size relating to the diversified conglomerate Sunshine Holdings PLC’s) took place between entities controlled by Sunshine Holdings director G. Sathasivam, a company official said yesterday.
Tansinghe (Private) Limited transferred 16.02 million shares, or 11.85 percent of the shares in Sunshine Holdings, which is Tansinghe’s entire shareholding, to Lamurep Investments Limited for Rs. 760.73 million at a consideration of Rs. 47.50 per share this Wednesday. “I wouldn’t call it a related party transaction. This was one shareholder who held shares through two companies bringing it under one company. They are owned by G. Sathasivam,” Sunshine Holdings Group Managing Director Vish Govindasamy told Mirror Business.
Two director dealing disclosures filed by the G.Sathasivam and S.G.Sathsivam to the Colombo Stock Exchange yesterday confirmed the purchasing of the said shares by Lamurep but was mum on the sale of shares by Tansinghe (Private) Limited.
However, the transaction does not trigger the Takeovers and Mergers Code, despite the traded shares falling within the Code’s thresholds, as both selling and buying were carried out by the same party. Sathasivam, who founded Sunshine Holdings as a pharmaceutical business, has cultivated close ties with India’s second largest conglomerate Tata, according to Sunshine Holdings’ annual reports, through which the company supplies to Tata’s Tetleys Tea brand which is popular in the UK, Canada, the US and other global markets.
The company’s shares had opened at Rs. 46.60 per share on the day of the trade while yesterday the shares were trading as high as Rs. 49.40 per share on lower volumes.
The net asset value per share at the end of the group’s second quarter for the 2017 financial year was Rs. 44.94, while the earnings per share for the quarter had been Rs. 1.68, improving from Rs. 1.27 year-on-year.
At the end of the 2016 financial year, Sunshine Holdings had posted Rs. 4.34 in earnings per share, and Rs. 1.05 in dividends, with a net asset value per share of Rs. 42.78.
The company annual report noted that the group plans on expanding its brands overseas, as well as expanding its healthcare oil palm operations, which had buoyed the company profitability during global downturns in tea and rubber over the past few years.
Lamurep now owns 32.12 percent of the shares of Sunshine Holdings, while high net worth investor Dr. T. Senthilverl owns 22.42 percent. Foreign investment banks Deepcar Limited and Moneymore Securities Limited own 18.94 percent and 16.88 percent of the issued shares, respectively.
Sunshine Holdings’ public float as at September 30, 2016 was at 7.04 percent. Since the company’s minimum public float market capitalization does not exceed Rs. 1 billion, the group has to increase its public float figure to 10 percent by the end of June 2017 to remain listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange.