(News Bulletin 247) – According to the Autorité des marchés financiers, this simplified offer launched in April only collected a little over 99 million shares out of the 288 million targeted.

Should the Bolloré Group have been a little more generous with its minority shareholders? The simplified takeover bid (OPAS) launched by the company for a little less than 10% of its capital was in any case far from full.

As a reminder, this takeover bid was announced on March 14 at the time of the company’s annual results and then launched on April 18. It related to a total of 288.6 million shares, or 9.78% of the capital.

The company offered a price of 5.75 euros per share. It then added an additional price of 25 cents per share, which will be paid if the sale of the logistics division (Bolloré Logistics) to the maritime transport group CMA CGM is successful under the conditions provided. Which is on the right track since, at the beginning of May, the Bolloré Group received a promise to purchase from the Marseilles company for the acquisition of this division at a price of 5 billion euros, in enterprise value.

Compagnie de l’Odet, one of Vincent Bolloré’s holding companies, which owns 66.8% of the capital and 76.7% of the voting rights, had warned that it would not participate in the operation, thus leaving the minority bring their titles.

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Speculations on Vivendi

The latter did not rush to the buyback offer for Bolloré SE shares. According to a notice from the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) published on Wednesday announcing the result of the operation as of May 30, only 99.1 million shares have been tendered to the offer. That is a total of 34% of the maximum number of shares targeted by the company. “Euronext Paris will announce the settlement-delivery schedule of the public offer through a notice”, specifies the AMF.

On the Paris Stock Exchange, the action was based on the proposal of the OPAS, additional price included or almost. The title thus evolved to 5.99 euros on Wednesday. This Thursday the action yields 0.8% around 10:20 a.m. to 5.84 euros and remains up 13.7% since the start of the year.

Bolloré Group has recently been the subject of much speculation, as the company owns just over 29% of Vivendi’s capital. However, the media and video game group will cancel shares this year, which should, theoretically, increase Bolloré Group’s stake in September above 30%, i.e. the threshold which obliges to launch a public offer of purchase.

Several analysts considered it possible that the Bolloré Group, with its well-filled pockets (12 billion euros in potential cash at the end of December and this excluding proceeds from the sale of Bolloré Logistics) could take the plunge and launch this takeover bid. But recent sales of Vivendi shares, although low in amount, from a subsidiary of the Bolloré Group have undermined this scenario. On the contrary, these share sales support the idea that the Bolloré Group should sell shares on the market to avoid crossing this 30% threshold.

“We don’t really want to cross the takeover threshold. The project is not on the agenda,” Cyrille Bolloré, CEO of the company, said last week, quoted by the AFP, during the general meeting of shareholders.

To avoid this, Bolloré Group will certainly have to sell more shares. According to Deutsche Bank, after the sales of securities announced last week, the company still holds 29.5% of the capital. With the cancellations of securities planned by Vivendi, this participation would theoretically (and without any new Bolloré Group action) rise to 30.6% in September, according to the bank’s calculations.

If in the short term, it therefore seems unlikely that Groupe Bolloré will cross the Rubicon, the question is much more open in the medium term. Invest Securities considers that in absolute terms “speculative interest in Vivendi remains, Bolloré now being no more than a strong holding company with net cash of nearly 5 billion euros after the disposals during the last months of its activities in Africa at MSC and its logistics activities at CMA CGM”. UBS is on the same line judging that an offer cannot be excluded in the long term, because Bolloré has, according to it, a net cash of 5.4 billion euros and a gross cash of 11.2 billion euros.