Sterling Holiday hits 52-week high on open offer by Thomas Cook

Thomas Cook (India) made an open offer for buying up to 26% in Sterling Holiday at offer price of Rs 98 per share.

Sterling Holiday Resorts (India) is trading higher by 3% at Rs 96 after Thomas Cook (India) made an open offer for buying up to 26% in the company for Rs 230 crore.

Thomas Cook (India) has made an open offer to acquire up to 23.49 million equity shares of Sterling Holiday Resorts (India) at a price of Rs 98 per share, ICICI Securities, the manager to the Open Offer said in a regulatory filing.

The stock opened at Rs 96 and touched a 52-week high of Rs 99 on the BSE. The counter has seen huge trading activity with around 9 million shares already changed hands till 0945 hours against an average less than 200,000 shares that were traded daily in past two weeks on the BSE.

Meanwhile, Canada-based billionaire Prem Watsa-owned Thomas Cook India and Chennai-based resort company Sterling Holiday Resorts have announced a merger in a cash and stock deal that values Sterling at Rs 870 crore.

According to an announcement by Thomas Cook, the company will first make a preferential allotment investment of Rs 187 crore at Rs 90.49 a share in Sterling Holiday, giving it around 23% stake in the company. Thomas Cook will then buy shares worth Rs 176 crore from Sterling’s existing shareholders — Bay Capital, investors Sidharth Shankar, Dhanalaxmi S and Rakesh Jhunjhunwala — at Rs 98 a share.

The share swap ratio for the merger has been fixed at 120 shares of Thomas Cook for every 100 shares of Sterling Holiday.

Shares of Thomas Cook (India) on the other hand, was up 1% at Rs 87.95 on the BSE. The stock opened at Rs 88.25 and touched a high of Rs 92 so far.