DHL and Indian Blue Dart Express in the final step of delisting process

Shares of Blue Dart Express surged by nearly 10% on Monday on the BSE on talk that DHL has agreed to an offer price of Rs 950 per share to acquire the remaining stake in the company. The freight and logistics major had acquired a majority stake in Blue Dart in 2004 and has since then been trying hard to acquire the residual stake and delist the company. DHL currently holds a little over 81% in Blue Dart through DHL Express Singapore, while institutional investors collectively hold 10.34%. Individual investors have a stake of less than 5%. The institutional investors include fund houses like SBI Mutual Fund and UTI Mutual Fund.

According to sources, talks had initially fallen through in November last year due to differences over the buyback price. DHL finally gave the go-ahead to a price arrived at by the reverse book building process in November last year. Interestingly, DHL had earlier refused to accept this price of Rs 950 per share. The price is at a premium of nearly 44% over Monday’s closing price of Rs 649 on BSE. In the past one month, the stock has gained nearly 45% or Rs 196.30.

Earlier, DHL was insisting on a price of less than Rs 700 per share that was unacceptable to the shareholders. After many deliberations, the promoters decided to accept the discovered price of Rs 950.

The delisting process is finally on track, nearly 10 months after DHL first sent an official notice to the board of Blue Dart, signalling its intention of getting the company delisted.