EQS-News / 07/07/2021 / 10:02 UTC+8
July 5, Beijing, Indigo Glamour Co Ltd, a subsidiary of MBK Partners and CAR Inc, a Hong Kong Stock Exchange listed
company, jointly announced a completion of the mandatory acquisition. All remaining offer shares of CAR Inc have been
transferred to the offeror, indicating that CAR Inc, the Chinese auto rental service provider has completed the
privatization and become a wholly-owned subsidiary of MBK Partners. It will be delisted from the Hong Kong Stock
Exchange at 9 am on July 8, 2021.
MBK Partners, a leading private equity firm in North Asia, planned to acquire all the 443 million shares of CAR Inc
held by UCAR Inc, another Chinese car-rental company, at a price of HKUSD4.00 (USD0.52) per share for a total price of
approximately HKUSD1.771 billion on November 10, 2020, becoming the second largest shareholder after Legend Holdings
Corp. Two days later, MBK Partners put forward a voluntary comprehensive cash offer with prerequisites. The offer price
per share was HKUSD4.00, involving approximately HKUSD8.49 billion.
On March 4 this year, MBK Partners' stake soared to approximately 94 percent and became the controlling shareholder of
CAR Inc. The company sent a mandatory acquisition notice to the remaining shareholders in accordance with Article 88 of
the Companies Law of the Cayman Islands on June 2.
On July 5, MBK Partners completed a comprehensive acquisition of CAR Inc. Since then, CAR Inc has become a wholly-owned
subsidiary of MBK Partners and will be delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at 9 am on July 8, 2021.
Since last year, due to the restricted travel conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the shrinking tourism market,
and the impact of Chinese coffee chain - Luckin Coffee's incident, CAR Inc once saw its share price cut in half.
Subsequently, well-known United States investment firm Warburg Pincus, BAIC Group, SAIC Motor and MBK Partners, one of
the largest private equity funds in North Asia, successively proposed the intention to acquire shares in CAR Inc.
MBK Partners eventually became the final winner, acquiring the stocks of CAR Inc's subsidiaries, at a premium of 55.79
percent compared to the average closing price of the previous 60 trading days, and finally completed the wholly-owned
acquisition of CAR Inc.
Despite travel activities have been severely interrupted periodically due to the epidemic in 2020, CAR Inc still
managed to achieve outstanding results, with adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and
amortization) of approximately 2 billion yuan (USD309 million) and 2.1 billion yuan of sales revenue from used car
business throughout the year.
Both the company's rental income and sales revenue of second-hand car have rebounded significantly since the third
quarter of last year. In the second half of 2020, the company's income generated from car rental business, surged by
21.1 percent to 2.2 billion yuan from the first half of last year, while its sales revenue contributed by second-hand
car sales reached 1.2 billion yuan, up 23.8 percent compared with the performance between January and June last year.
Even though the government proposed people to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year at home over the course of first
quarter of 2021, the number of travelers during the peak season of the Spring Festival has fallen sharply, and the
demand for car rental has also notably fallen.
With the implementation of a number of measures to boost efficiency and reduce costs, CAR Inc achieved total revenue of
1.2 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year. Among them, the income of its core business - car rental, amounted
to 880 million yuan, grew by 0.5 percent on a yearly basis, with a net profit of 6 million yuan, a substantial growth
over the same period last year. On the whole, whether in terms of fleet size, revenue capacity or brand influence, CAR
Inc's position as the leader of China's car rental market is unshakable.
With MBK Partners' involvement, CAR Inc's financing channels is expected to further diversified and reinforced. In the
first quarter of this year, the company completed the issuance of convertible bonds with a total principal of USD175
million to Mcqueen SS Ltd (an affiliate of MBK Partners), and senior notes with a total principal amount of USD250
million. These moves have greatly improved the its debt structure and boosted the market confidence on the company.
According to statistics, MBK Partners is one of the largest private equity funds in North Asia, with more than USD24
billion in capital under management. Companies invested by MBK Partners are industry leaders, such as Godiva (a
world-renowned chocolate producer and retailer), Kuroda Electric (a leading independent electronic component
distributor in Japan), Daesung Industrial Gas (the largest industrial gas supplier in Republic of Korea), Modern House
(the number one household goods retailer in Republic of Korea), Lotte Card (Republic of Korea's leading credit card
company), etc.
ENDS
07/07/2021 Dissemination of a Financial Press Release, transmitted by EQS Group.
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
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July 06, 2021 22:03 ET (02:03 GMT)