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Publicly listed Uniti Group has revised its bid for fibre infrastructure company OptiComm to $6.67 per share, giving a new value of roughly $694 million.
The latest proposal, based on 104.08 million OptiComm shares, represents almost $200 million more than Uniti initially offered and comes amid the heated bidding war with Aware Super.
The new value represents $0.17 cents more than Aware's takeover proposal of $6.50 per share and involves $5.20 in cash and $1.07 Uniti shares for each OptiComm share, giving a value of $6.67.
Additional acquisition consideration will be funded through a $40 million increase in Uniti’s committed debt facilities and an additional 26 million Uniti shares will be issued to OptiComm shareholders.
OptiComm directors have unanimously recommended shareholders vote in favour of the new scheme in the absence of a superior proposal.
The new offer comes as Uniti accused Opticomm of breaching its legal obligations concerning its proposed acquisition after Aware threw in a bigger offer earlier this week that outbid Uniti by roughly $68 million.
The broadband specialist sent a letter to OptiComm on 12 October which accused the fibre-optic network builder of breaching its two scheme implementation deeds with Uniti, which made an initial offer of $507 million in June.
At the time, Uniti said the deal will provide them with a “more diverse telecommunications infrastructure company with a large pipeline of long-term growth opportunities”.
OptiComm's market capitalisation stands at $687.56 million and was trading at $6.52 at the time of publication.
