The board of Harworth Group has rejected Peel Group’s £580m cash offer to acquire the business.
The board, which was “unanimous and unequivocal in its rejection of the offer”, said Peel’s proposal “fundamentally undervalues Harworth and its near and longer-term prospects”.
The board added the offer “has been opportunistically timed to take advantage of a material dislocation between Harworth’s share price and the value of its underlying assets, driven predominantly by macroeconomic factors”.
The group confirmed that, due to the scale and strength of opportunities across its 35m sq ft industrial and logistics and 0.8GW powered land and development pipeline, it is accelerating its reallocation of capital to higher returning opportunities aligned to powered land and industrial growth sectors.
As part of this, a medium-term business plan with cost reductions has already been approved in principle by the board, which believes that together these actions will create a simpler, lower-cost and higher-returning platform to deliver sustainable future growth for shareholders.
Under the terms of Peel’s offer, which valued Harworth at approximately £582.88m, Harworth shareholders would receive 172.5p in cash for each share held.
