Harworth to exit London Stock Exchange after £630m takeover

The logistics developer will cease to be listed on the LSE on 12 November after Peel secured more than 75% of its shares.

Peel Pepper, the Peel-owned takeover vehicle, had a £632m offer for Harworth accepted in late September after its initial bid was rebuffed.

Peel, with funding from NatWest and HSBC, agreed to pay 187p/share – an 8.4% increase in price compared to the 172.5p/share initially offered – for 72m Harworth shares.

Peel has said from the outset that, should it achieve a 75% shareholding of the Rotheram-based business it had previously owned less than a third of, it would seek to take it private.

Now that Peel and its concert parties have secured that level of control, Harworth has today announced that the notice period for delisting has started. The company will once again be privately owned as of 8AM on 12 November.

Peel has previously said that operational challenges, worsening cashflow, and lower sales volumes were factors pointing in favour of delisting.

Harworth’s board, which has now been replaced, originally pushed back on that assertion, stating that Peel’s attempted takeover was “opportunistically timed to take advantage of a material dislocation between Harworth’s share price and the value of its underlying assets, driven predominantly by macroeconomic factors.”

Harworth, which was born out of UK Coal in 2004, listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2015. The company owns around 15,000 acres of land across the UK.