Is energy giant AGL Energy Ltd
(ASX: AGL) looking to buy Vocus Group Ltd (ASX: VOC)?
AGL is one of Australia’s largest electricity generation portfolio owners and operators and the largest ASX-listed investor in renewable energy. As of 2018, AGL had more than 3.6 million customer accounts.
Vocus is a vertically integrated telecommunications service provider, operating in the Australia and New Zealand markets. Thanks to a merger with M2 Group, it is responsible for numerous retail and business telco brands, such as Primus.
What’s Going On?
This morning AGL responded to a report in the Australian Financial Review that it was interested in buying Vocus. The AFR said in its Street Talk section that AGL had an internal team looking at the numbers on Vocus for months and had hired investment bankers to help.
There had apparently been high level talks between AGL and Vocus.
AGL said that it had been assessing growth opportunities to meet the needs of connected customers as energy and data demand continue to converge.
AGL then said it had recently contacted Vocus with a confidential, non-binding indicative offer and that it was seeking access to due diligence material to decide whether to make a binding offer, however it was unable to reach terms.
But subsequently Vocus received a potential takeover offer from EQT Infrastructure with an offer of $5.25 per share. The Vocus Board has granted EQT non-exclusive due diligence to allow EQT to potentially put forward a formal binding proposal to Vocus. Vocus warned that this could take a number of weeks.
AGL has withdrawn its non-binding indicative offer but will continue to assess opportunities to support its strategy.
AGL is an interesting business with impressive energy generation assets, however the growth of solar panel usage makes the future somewhat uncertain, so it might be better to consider one of the reliable ASX shares in the free report below instead.
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