Entain to purchase Enlabs AB following shareholder consent

Following many months of complicated negotiations and prominent iGaming and sportsbook operator Entain has announced the signing of an around £316 million ($436 million) deal that is to see it acquire Baltic-facing competitor Enlabs AB.

The Isle of Man-based firm is already responsible for a plethora of well-known iGaming brands including Bwin, Ladbrokes and SportingBet and it used an official press release to detail that the agreement will involve it paying approximately £4.49 ($6.21) for every outstanding share in Enlabs AB. The operator explained that this price represents an improvement of some 32.4% when compared with an unsuccessful January offer of about £3.39 ($4.69) and has consequently been accepted by a resounding 94.2% of the Stockholm-headquartered target’s shareholders.

Protracted phase:

Entain, which was previously known as GVC Holdings until undergoing a name-change late last year, is moreover behind such prominent online gambling brands as PartyPoker, Gamebookers and SportingBet and it detailed that this approval ratio surpasses a 90% acceptance threshold previously set by Enlabs AB. The firm furthermore asserted that it had ‘decided to extend the acceptance period’ for those still hoping to take advantage of this offer until the first day of April with any subsequent latter-half settlements now ‘expected to occur on or around April 13.’

Additional attention:

London-listed Entain also declared that a little over 96% of those holding the 1.4 million ‘warrants’ issued as part of Enlabs AB’s employee ‘incentive program’ have separately accepted its buyout offer and that it is to now move towards acquiring some 1.35 million of these interests ‘at a price equal to the see-through value of the warrants on the basis of the offer price.’

Read a statement from Entain…

“All conditions for completion of the offer have been satisfied and Entain therefore declares the offer unconditional. Settlement in respect of the shares in Enlabs AB tendered no later than March 18, 2021, is expected to occur on or around March 30, 2021.”

Monetary motivation:

Entain earlier forecast that the successful purchase of Enlabs AB, which has offices in Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Malta, Marbella, Minsk and Stockholm, would allow it to book as much as $109.2 million in additional net gaming revenues every year via an increase of market share in the online gaming markets of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It additionally revealed that such an alliance to give it the keys to the Optibet-branded family of iGaming domains as well as a majority stake in Maltese operator Shogun Group could boost its annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization by up to a very attractive $28.5 million.