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360 Capital outbids NextDC in effort to acquire Asia Pacific Data Centre Group

The fight for APDC continues, with 360 Capital beating NextDC's last acquisition offer by AU$0.08 a share.
Written by Tas Bindi, Contributor

Property trust 360 Capital has updated its proposal to acquire remaining shares in Asia Pacific Data Centre Group (APDC), increasing its per-share price from AU$1.80 to AU$1.95.

Additionally, 360 Capital has made the offer unconditional to "give certainty" to APDC shareholders.

The trust said it would be funding the acquisition through its existing cash reserves and borrowings within seven business days of receiving formal acceptance by APDC shareholders.

360 Capital's latest offer represents a 24.6 percent premium over APDC's closing share price of AU$1.565 on May 1 -- the day before it acquired its initial 19.99 percent stake in APDC for AU$1.56 a share -- and a 3.7 percent premium over rival bidder NextDC's last offer of $1.87 per share, which was approved by APDC's board of directors last month.

NextDC, which recently increased its share of voting stock from 25.6 percent to 29.1 percent, is the sole tenant of its datacentre facilities in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. The company was prompted to submit an acquisition offer because of concerns around 360 Capital as a potential landlord.

360 Capital, which called for and eventually withdrew a meeting to oust APDC's management and take over the leadership in July, was denied a seat on the board.

The property trust claimed at the time that APDC and NextDC had both refused to engage in its proposal, which the latter said was "highly conditional" and reflected "poor corporate governance".

Rahul Badethalav, investor relations manager at NextDC, told ZDNet that there are also "meaningful benefits" for customers in being the datacentre operator as well as the owner of the land that sits underneath the datacentres.

"Naturally, given our datacentres sit on the land itself, it would be a fairly straightforward transaction to make," he said in July.

As of June 30, 2017, APDC reported its three Australian datacentres in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth are valued at AU$212.8 million, up 13.8 percent from AU$187 million in the 2016 financial year. Separately, M1 is valued at AU$80 million, S1 at AU$95.3 million, and P1 at AU$37.5 million.

"360 Capital believes datacentres as a real estate class are very exciting and that the facilities in [APDC] are world-class," the property trust said in a disclosure to the Australian Securities Exchange.

NextDC and 360 Capital both declined in response to ZDNet's request to comment.

In its full-year financial report, APDC reported a 16.5 percent surge in profit from AU$31.7 million in the 2015-16 financial year to a record AU$36.9 million in the 2016-17 financial year.

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