The Eclipx Group Ltd (ASX: ECX) share price could be a mover today after it announced an asset sale.
Eclipx is one of Australia’s largest providers of fleet, equipment leasing & management, vehicle rentals and online auction services to businesses and consumers in Australia and New Zealand. At 31 March 2019 it managed or financed 117,669 vehicles with $2.5 billion of assets under management (AUM).
What Happened At Eclipx?
The business has announced the sale of its ‘non-core’ Commercial Equipment Finance Australia business to Grow Asset Finance for $14.6 million, the transaction is expected to close in the coming days.
The business that’s being sold provides finance solutions for businesses of all sizes to enable them to lease or finance IT, office and manufacturing equipment.
The net proceeds will be used to reduce debt, as it said it would do in the half year result release.
Eclipx’s sale price of $14.6 million is slightly higher than the net tangible assets/real underlying value of the business. However, it will result in an accounting loss of around $15 million due to the write-off of deferred tax and intercompany loans. Eclipx’s lenders have agreed to exclude this loss from the covenant testing on 30 September 2019.
The transaction includes limited transitional services arrangements for up to one year, with these costs being borne by Grow, The employees will stay with the business.
Eclipx CEO Julian Russell said: “The sale of Commercial Equipment Finance Australia is an important step in Eclipx’s announced simplification plan, and contributes to our key objectives of reducing corporate debt and group complexity.”
This is another sale on top of the sale of GraysOnline and AreYouSelling to Quadrant Private Equity for $60 million.
Buy, Hold Or Sell?
Since the start of April the Eclipx share price is up 182% with it recovering a lot of its lost ground after a horror start to 2019.
I’m not sure how much more the share price can rise in response to it selling off bits of its business. I’d rather give Eclipx a miss and instead buy the shares of the growth shares in the free report below which could have much better returns potential.
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