HARIM Holdings' exit offer for bulk shipping company Pan Ocean Pan Ocean: AZY 0% has turned unconditional after the latter' s shareholders approved its voluntary delisting from the Singapore Exchange (SGX).

 

Valid acceptances and the total shares owned, controlled or agreed to be acquired by offeror Harim Holdings and its concert parties amounted to 54.71 per cent as at 6 pm on Monday (Dec 20).

 

At the last extraordinary general meeting held on Monday, 94.6 per cent of Pan Ocean' s shareholders had voted to approve the voluntary delisting of the company, while 5.5 per cent had voted against.

 

Pan Ocean and Harim Holdings - who is also the former' s South Korean parent company - had said that the proposed delisting is not a privatisation exercise.

 

The company intends to maintain its primary listing on the Korea Exchange, and Singapore registered shareholders can elect to have their shares transferred from the Singapore branch to the South Korea register if they wish.

 

The exit offer remains open for acceptance until 5.30 pm on Jan 3, 2022.

MAINBOARD-LISTED shipping company Pan Ocean Co has entered into a time charter contract for two liquefied natural gas carriers with Shell Tankers (Singapore), the firm said in a bourse filing on Wednesday.

 

The estimated total sales for the transaction was US$319 million.

 

The newly inked contract will commence from October and includes a firm duration period of seven years, as well as two extension options during the contract period. The total duration would then be 13 years, depending on Shell' s decision.

  Pan Ocean has not carried out any exercise to raise cash funding on the SGX in the last five years.

Bulk shipping company Pan Ocean is proposing a voluntary delisting from the Singapore Exchange with a conditional cash exit offer of $8.70 per share.

 

This represents a premium to the shares' last transacted price of $8 on May 10, its last trading day.

 

The delisting is not a privatisation exercise, Pan Ocean and its South Korean parent company Harim Holdings said in a joint announcement of Monday (June 14). The company intends to maintain its primary listing on the Korea Exchange (KRX), and Singapore registered shareholders can elect to have their shares transferred from the Singapore branch register to the South Korea register if they wish.

 

The exit offer will not be extended to the shareholders of the company whose shares are registered on the company' s principal register of shareholders in South Korea.

 

In the announcement, Pan Ocean and Harim said that in maintaining the dual listing, Pan Ocean incurs costs that could be focused on business operations.

 

KRX is also geographically more aligned with the company' s business operations and core business competencies, which are based in South Korea, it said.

 

Furthermore, trading liquidity in Singapore is generally thin, with an average of 86 shares traded in the last one month leading up to its last trading day. There are only 170,597 shares, representing about 0.03 per cent of the total number of issued shares, trading on the SGX, as at the Monday announcement.

 

Moreover, Pan Ocean has no need for access to capital markets and has not carried out any exercise to raise cash funding on the SGX in the last five years.

 

The delisting is subject to the approval of the SGX and both the delisting and exit offer will be conditional on the obtaining of shareholders' approval at an extraordinary general meeting.

 

MAINBOARD-LISTED shipping company Pan Ocean Co entered into a time charter contract on April 9 for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) bunkering vessel with Shell NA LNG, the firm said in a bourse filing on Monday.

 

The estimated total sales for the transaction was US$55 million.

 

The newly inked contract will commence from May 2023 and includes a firm duration period, as well as two extension options during the contract period. The total duration would be eight years, depending on Shell' s decision.

 

Prior to making the announcement, the company had requested a trading halt which was lifted shortly after.