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SMIT
Internationale NV, the world’s biggest marine-salvage
operator, rose to a record in
Amsterdam trading after chief executive officer Ben Vree said he’s
ready to hold talks about a sale of the company.
Smit
added 45 cents, or 0.6 percent, to €72.92, giving the
Rotterdam-based company a market value of €1.27 billion.
A takeover premium of 20 percent to 30 percent is
“normal” in the Dutch market, Vree said an in interview.
On
February 26, Smit rebuffed a $300-million offer for its
terminals unit, which tows vessels to offshore oil and
gas terminals, from Royal Boskalis Westminster NV and a
Saudi partner.
Boskalis,
the world’s largest dredging company, may want the
division enough to make an offer for all of Smit, said
Herman Bots, an analyst at Theodoor Gilissen Bankiers in
Amsterdam.
“I’m
more than happy to talk to anyone who can and will offer
to buy the whole company and supports our strategy—that
includes Boskalis,” Vree said. “If someone comes along
with the intention of ripping the company apart, we
won’t play ball.”
Smit had
jumped 43 percent in the past three months, compared
with a 26-percent increase in the Bloomberg Europe Oil &
Gas Services Index. Smit is valued at 11 times estimated
2008 earnings per share, compared with 16 for France’s
Bourbon SA, owner of the world’s biggest fleet of supply
ships for deep-water oil exploration.
A
complete takeover would add 399 vessels and allow
Boskalis to overtake Svitzer, part of A.P. Moeller-Maersk
A/S, as the owner of the world’s largest tugboat fleet.
“I would
absolutely keep the terminals unit because it’s an
integrated part of Smit,” said Gerrit Jan ten Doesschate,
who runs Fortis Investments’ small Dutch companies fund
in
Amsterdam
and increased his holdings after Boskalis’s February 25
offer.
“We
wouldn’t rule out a takeover of the company,” said ten
Doesschate, whose funds own more than 1 percent of the
shares.
Crude
oil rose to a record $119.93 a barrel in New York after
BP Plc. shut a North Sea pipeline and gunmen attacked
police guarding
Nigeria’s
largest oil-and-gas terminal.
Stephen
Kusmierczak, who manages Columbia Wanger Asset
Management LP’s European Smaller Companies Fund in
Chicago,
said an offer for Smit could be above €80. Columbia
Wanger, which oversees almost $40 billion, owns 5.5
percent of the shares.
Smit
Terminals accounted for 12 percent of the company’s 2007
sales of €552 million. As petroleum companies boost
spending on offshore terminals, they’re signing more
contracts to ship oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) to
Europe and Asia from exporters such as Kuwait, Angola
and Gabon.
By
December Smit’s boats will start serving an LNG import
terminal off the Italian coast for 25 years for a
venture led by Exxon Mobil Corp. and Qatar Petroleum.
Smit
plans to borrow €400 million in the next five years to
build vessels, including 44 to be delivered in 2008,
Vree said.
The
expansion was the lure for Boskalis, based in the Dutch
city of Papendrecht. Lamnalco, the company’s venture
with Riyadh-based Rezayat Group, on February 25 offered
to buy the Smit unit to eliminate a competitor and
absorb its contracts.
Vree
rejected the bid the following day. The terminals’
stable income helps offset less predictable earnings
from Smit’s salvage arm, he said in the interview. A
change in ownership may also prompt customers to end
contracts, he said.
Operating profit at Smit Terminals may jump 26 percent
in the next three years, outstripping a 4.2- percent
growth at the whole company, according to estimates by
ABN Amro Holding NV analysts.
“We are
carefully considering our options and will take our
time,” Boskalis spokesman Roel Berends said. Vree said
he hasn’t spoken with Boskalis since February 27.
Fop Smit
started the business in 1842 with one boat, a
140-horsepower paddle steamer called Kinderdijk.
The
company’s three main units tow ships in ports, lift
pontoons for offshore construction such as bridges and
recovers stranded vessels including MSC Napoli, a
container ship that ran aground off the southwest coast
of England last year. (Bloomberg) |
