The Forgendo board have until December 18 to decide whether to exercise its pre-emption rights for 97 million shares in Forthnet.
Existing shareholders are being given the chance to take up the shares, which would increase the share capital by just over €29 million.
The shares are being sold at €0.30, which is less than half of what they were trading for in the first week of December, having seen quite a rallying in price since the third week of November when they were trading for around €0.43.
Go is a joint shareholder in Forgendo, which owns 41.27 per cent of Forthnet. This means that its pro-rata share of the pre-emption rights would amount to €6 million, but it could buy less than that – or more if the other shareholders do not take up their allocation.
Go’s entire investment in Forthnet was written off in its financial statements as at December 31, 2012, so the decision on whether to invest any further money will have to be carefully considered in order to justify the decision to its shareholders unhappy at the write-down.
However, failure to invest could see its shareholding diluted, reducing its influence over the company’s future – and the chance to recoup any of its losses should there be a turnaround.
Go said months ago that it would only take a decision once the prospectus was launched, which it was on December 2. Asked for a comment, the company said: “The company is carefully assessing this prospectus and the board’s primary consideration will remain that of safeguarding the best interest of Go and its shareholders. Any eventual decision regarding Forthnet would be announced as required on the Malta Stock Exchange and communicated to Go shareholders in due course.”
In the meantime, there were also changes to the rest of Forthnet’s shareholding.
In July, second-largest shareholder Cryte Investments GPI BV sold its 25.73 per cent shareholding. At the same time, Zesmero Ltd acquired 27.04 per cent of the shares, becoming the second-largest shareholder.
A few days later, Forthnet announced that Wind Hellas Telecommunications SA had an option to acquire all the 3,503,073 shares owned by Zesmero.
It has now been confirmed that Wind Hellas exercised this call option and it now controls 32.3 per cent of the latter’s share capital.