A consortium led by Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management has agreed to buy Uniti for A$3.6 billion ($2.7 billion), the Australian telecoms group said in a stock exchange filing on Thursday.
The consortium will pay A$5 per share, which is a premium of more than 58% over its share price on March 14, when the bid was made.
The cash price share implies an equity value, on a 100% fully diluted basis, of about $3.62 billion and an enterprise value of about $3.73 billion.
As well as Brookfield, the consortium consists of New Zealand infrastructure investor Morrison & Co and Australian pension scheme Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation.
The agreement puts an end to the bid by Macquarie Asset Management and PSP Investments to acquire the company, also for A$5 a share, last month.
The Brookfield consortium matched that offer, on the condition Uniti would terminate discussions with Macquarie and PSP.
Uniti began as a wireless broadband provider, listing in Australia in 2019 with a valuation of just A$25 million but more than doubled in size when it acquired fibre broadband infrastructure owner OptiComm in 2020.
The company competes with the Australian government-owned National Broadband Network to connect real estate developments to the internet via fixed-line fibre optic cables.
- George Russell
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