Vocus is courting potential buyers for the second time in three years, revealing Swedish private equity group EQT Infrastructure as a possible suitor.
The telco was last up for sale in mid-2017 following twin profit downgrades but the two private equity firms interested at the time were unable to strike a deal.
Speculation yesterday again pointed to private equity and trade buyers being interested in buying out the Australian telco.
Vocus said in a financial filing that it had received an “indicative and non-binding proposal” from EQT Infrastructure.
“The board notes that there is no certainty that this process or the indicative proposal will result in an offer for Vocus,” the company said.
The board said it had granted “non-exclusive due diligence access to EQT to enable EQT to potentially put a formal binding proposal to Vocus”.
“That process is likely to take a number of weeks,” the company said.
The indicative proposal could see Vocus shares fetch $5.25 each in an all-cash transaction, which would be a substantial premium on the company’s current price of $3.89.
If a formal offer was made at $5.25 per share, it would value Vocus at $3.27 billion, compared to its current market cap of $2.42 billion.
EQT Infrastructure last week snapped up the Maltese telco Melita. It is also a recent part-owner in the US fibre operator Zayo Group.
