ACKERMANS: Breda victorious in race for ABK as CMNE drops out

CMNE backed out of its endeavour to acquire Antwerps Beroepskrediet (ABK), allowing Breda to wrap the deal up and deploy € 115.2m of excess capital. This will prompt an upward adjustment of our earnings model and valuation of Bank J. van Breda (currently € 335.7m - AvH stake).

News:
Breda’s friendly counterbid on (ABK) valued the Antwerp-based banker at € 115.2m (€ 490 p.s) and beat out on CMNE’s increased € 132.3m bid (€ 540 p.s). We remind that Breda at couple of weeks announced that it has been able to lift its ABK stake to 40.80% and raise the number of voting rights to 87.33%. As a result, CMNE has but little choice to make a strategic retreat.

Our View:
The Breda offer equals approx. 50% of ABK’s net equity (before taxes related to potentially exiting the Beroepskrediet network) and 60% of net equity (post-taxes). ABK at YE10 had total assets of € 541.7m (Breda: € 3.21bn)and realised a FY10 net result of € 34.58m (Breda: € 25.7m).
The size of ABK makes for a very big acquisition, but going by the prospectus data we believe the deal should be value-enhancing quite rapidly. The deal should also open up opportunities to leverage the existing Breda franchise. In terms of financials, we remind that Breda’s CAD solvency ratio at YE10 stood at 14.7% (minimum req.: 8%) and its Core Tier 1 Capital Ratio stood at 11.3% (minimum req.: 4%), which indicates it has ample manoeuvring space to fund the bid out of its own balance sheet. Deploying the excess cash will have a positive impact on our earnings estimates going forward. We will adjust our estimates in the next couple of days.

Conclusion:
CMNE’s backing out is positive news that will allow Breda to wrap up one of its largest deals ever and spent excess capital. As such, it confirms our AvH investment case. Note that AvH’s last week's drop to € 62 (Friday close at € 62.91) in our view is largely excessive. Picking up the stock atcurrent levels is therefore a must. Based on yesterday’s closing prices, we estimate adjusted equity value per share at € 81.59 with a 22.9% discount.