(Bloomberg)—The battle for French electronics retailer Darty Plc has reached the brisk pace of a cattle auction, with Steinhoff International Holdings NV raising its offer three times in less than 24 hours in a contest with Groupe Fnac SA.
Steinhoff, which is trading blows with France’s Fnac, upped its terms to 160 pence a share in cash, valuing Darty, No. 63 in the Internet Retailer 2015 Europe 500, at about 860 million pounds ($1.2 billion). That tops a 153-pence cash offer minutes earlier from Fnac, No. 112 in the Europe 500, which included a partial share alternative.
The suitors are slugging it out for control of a business that leads the French market for items such as refrigerators and televisions, but is little known outside its home. The rapid-fire nature of the contest is unusual in the procedural world of takeovers and shows how both companies recognize the need to get bigger in a market under pressure from online retailers like Amazon.com Inc.
“For Fnac, it’s quite vital that they buy Darty because it offers the diversification that they are looking for,’’ said Michael Treherne, a portfolio manager at Johannesburg-based asset management company Vestact. “It’s more vital for their future to buy Darty than it is for Conforama, and that maybe will lead to Fnac overpaying and Steinhoff walking away.’’ Vestact has about 2.7 billion rand ($190 million) of assets under management, including Steinhoff shares.
More to lose
For Steinhoff, acquiring Darty’s 400 outlets would continue a takeover spree that included the 2011 purchase of French furniture chain Conforama. Fnac, which sells gadgets, books and music, may need the deal more as it has fewer alternatives for consolidation.
“Probably, Fnac has slightly more to lose than Steinhoff,” said Charles Allen, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “Steinhoff has a lot of arrows in its quiver as it’s not only in France. So if it were not to achieve this deal there are other things that it could do in overall consolidation. Whereas if Steinhoff buys Darty, Fnac will look even more like the No. 2 in France.”
Fnac said shareholders owning 27.7% of Darty have agreed to accept its new offer. Steinhoff said investment managers have sold it about 19.5% of Darty’s shares.
The auction began last year when Fnac made a proposal that Darty rejected as being too low. It came back with a bid of 101 pence a share, and got Darty’s board to agree at 116 pence. Steinhoff crashed the party in March with an offer at 125 pence a share. Since then, the two sides have counter-punched in pursuit of their prize.
Buying Darty, which sells appliances and electronics, would triple Fnac’s number of stores to about 600. By combining, the retailers would get cost savings and additional sales of at least 130 million euros ($147 million) annually, Fnac said Thursday. Previously, Fnac estimated 85 million euros in cost savings alone, without a forecast for additional sales. Darty had Internet Retailer-estimated 2014 web sales of 385 million euros ($435.4 million at current exchange rates) while Fnac’s were an estimated 198.0 million euros ($223.9 million at current rates), according to Top500Guide.com data.
Increased synergies
The increased synergies forecast by Fnac indicate that Steinhoff, too, may be able to book higher-than-expected cost savings from a deal, said Graham Renwick, an analyst at Exane BNP Paribas. Beyond a price of 160 pence, “returns start to diminish,” he wrote in a report
Fnac was spun off in 2013 from the French luxury-goods company Kering SA (No. 145 in the Europe 500). The family holding company of Kering CEO Francois-Henri Pinault is the retailer’s biggest shareholder, with a 39% stake.
French media and telecommunications company Vivendi SA said this month it’s buying 15% of Fnac in an alliance to cooperate in distribution, live events and digital services.
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