(News Bulletin 247) – The digital services company will soon leave the Paris Stock Exchange after the success of the takeover bid launched by a concert of shareholders.

A large-scale “midcap” is preparing to bid farewell to the Paris Stock Exchange. This is the digital services and technology consulting company SII, which was the subject of a public offer at the initiative of members of the founder’s family. These companies are also regularly the target of public takeover bids.

The family of the founder, the management of the digital services company and funds managed by Blackstone formed a concert of shareholders to launch a takeover bid at 70 euros per share, on the outstanding securities that it did not yet hold, last December 13.

And this group announced this Monday that it had crossed the thresholds of 90% of the capital and voting rights of the company SII and held 90.54% of the capital and voting rights of this company. This threshold crossing results from an acquisition of SII shares by “SII Goes on”, a company created especially for this operation.

Reaching this key threshold will therefore pave the way for the implementation of a squeeze-out on shares not tendered to the simplified public purchase offer. In other words, this holding threshold calls for a delisting of this company which has been present on the Paris Stock Exchange since 1999.

“The Familial Huvé group, the director (Eric Matteucci, Editor’s note) and the managers now wish to be accompanied by a professional financial partner to deliver the business plan over the coming years and to be able to seize development opportunities while by reducing regulatory and administrative constraints and costs linked to listing”, SII explained to justify this operation.

An operation that “is no exception”

The SII initiative constitutes the largest PtoP (peer-to-peer) operation launched in 2023, for a valuation of 1.4 billion euros, Degroof Petercam recalled this Monday. “This delisting is no exception and corresponds to an underlying trend: the disenchantment of family-owned ETIs (mid-sized companies) with the stock market,” laments the bank.

“The causes are multiple: growing disconnect between value creation and stock market valuation, a penalizing lack of liquidity leading to a lack of monitoring on the part of analysts, the desire of investors to benefit from the withdrawal premium and finally the companies which easily find debt or private equity funds to finance the operation,” explains Degroof Petercam.

“We still have other operations under study and for the moment no reason to see this number of operations decrease in 2024,” declares Cyril Kammoun, CEO and managing partner of Degroof Petercam Investment Banking France.

The company thus intends to join a fairly large list of companies which have decided to leave the Parisian market after a buyout or because their reference shareholder no longer sees much interest in remaining listed on the stock exchange like Believe. The music publishing group is currently the subject of a takeover project by its founder and several investment funds, with a view to delisting.

Its manager had deplored that the progress of his company on the stock market did not reflect the operational dynamics of his group. “Since its IPO, Believe has continued an excellent growth dynamic, having enabled it to achieve, two years in advance, the objectives set at the time of listing. However, the solidity of its operational performance has not been reflected in the evolution of the stock price”, explained Denis Ladegaillerie.

A few weeks earlier, it was the company IDSud which had indicated that it wanted to leave the Parisian coast this year.

In mid-January, ESI Group left the Paris Stock Exchange after the success of the takeover operation of the American Keysight

Last year, 31 companies turned their backs on the Paris stock market, or 6 more than in 2022, according to the 15th EY public offering barometer.