November 20 (SeeNews) - Slovenian state holding company SDH, which is coordinating the privatization process in the country, said on Friday its supervisory board has approved selling state-owned equity in integrated hygiene and tissue paper producer Paloma.
SDH gave no details on the buyer or the deal price in its statement.
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Official data indicated the Slovenian state owns a combined 71% of Paloma.
Paloma's net sales fell 3% to 42.2 million euro ($45.1 million) in the first six months of 2015.
In early February, Paloma issued a public call for non-binding bids for a 15 million euro recapitalization. In March, the company said it had received multiple non-binding bids for the recapitalization from strategic and financial investors. The company gave no names at the time.
In June, Slovenian media reported that Polish-based Abris Capital and Slovakia's SHP Group had submitted bids for Paloma's recapitalization.
Paloma has said the proceeds from the capital increase will go for the modernisation and expansion of the company's manufacturing facilities, as well as for improving its efficiency and financial results.
The capital hike will be carried out in two stages - during the first one non-binding bids will be submitted and due diligence conducted, to be followed by the submission of binding bids.
The capital increase will be successful if a potential investor acquires at least one-third of the voting rights in Paloma, after which he will be obliged to publish a takeover bid for the remaining shares of the company.
Erste Group Bank and Slovenia’s P&S Capital are acting as financial advisors in the capital hike process.
In 2014, Paloma posted revenue of 87 million euro and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of 6.7 million euro. It has four paper machines with total paper production capacity of 72,000 t and 28 converting lines with capacity of 93,000 t.
($=0.934317 euro)