Key takeaways:
- The offer cost represents a 50% bonus to where the shares were on Monday.
- Hotel chain Swiss Chalet is one of the brands owned by Recipe Unlimited Corp.
Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. has offered to take Recipe Unlimited Corp. private in the latest stage for the nearly 140-year-old restaurant firm.
The deal declared by Recipe Unlimited Tuesday sets a $1.2 billion value on Canada’s oldest and most extensive full-service restaurant chain, which counts Swiss Chalet, Harvey’s, and The Keg among its approximately two-dozen brands.
Fairfax is already the controlling shareholder of Recipe Unlimited, owning 38.5 percent of the equity interest as of the end of the previous year for nearly 61 percent of the voting rights.
The other primary shareholder is Cara Holdings Ltd., the holding firm of the Phelan family, which would persist as an investor in the firm once it goes private.
Recipe Unlimited first went public in 1968, then known as CARA for the first two notes of Canadian Railway, which connects back to the firm’s initial founding in 1883 as the Canada Railway News Co. that catered to railway travelers.
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Cara Holdings Ltd. retook the firm private in 2004, and in 2013 Fairfax contracted to get several restaurants, including East Side Mario’s and Casey’s, into the business’s portfolio before the firm relisted publicly in 2015.
The deal declared Tuesday would see a bunch of Fairfax affiliates receives all outstanding shares, besides some shares owned by Cara Holdings, at $20.73 in cash.
According to a firm statement, the offer price represents a 53.4 percent bonus to Recipe Unlimited’s closing price on Aug. 8. Recipe, however, was selling at around $21 a share as late as last November before it began falling along with the broader market, and traded past $36 a share in its first year of returning to the market in 2015.
Source – CBC News
