Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q&A webcast on Advent's Public Tender Offer for u-blox. My name is [Yusuf], the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and that this conference is being recorded. For anyone who wishes to ask a question, you may press star and one on your telephone at any time. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and then two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. For operator assistance, please press star and then zero. This conference will not be recorded for publication or for broadcast.
At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Rafael Duarte, Head of Investor Relations at u-blox. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi everyone, and welcome to today's webcast from our offices in Thalwil, Switzerland. With me today are Chairman André Müller and our CEO Stephan Zizala. They will be addressing your questions regarding Advent's Public Tender Offer for u-blox. Before we begin, let me remind you that, as it is customary in this type of transaction, there are certain regulatory restrictions that limit what we can comment on. We kindly ask you for your understanding in this regard. Let's move directly to your questions, please.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star and then one. [Foreign language] Our first question comes from Buri Thomas, VV AG . Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon, gentlemen. I must say that I'm disappointed with Advent's offer of CHF 135. It does not reflect in any means the intrinsic value and the substantial potential of the company. Can you please explain to me why the Board of Directors is appealing to this offer at this point in time? Now that the sale of our business has been sold, is the short-range aiming for a turnaround and Locate running to its former strengths? u-blox is being virtually given away. I have three questions. First, was Advent the only bidder, and were there any industrial offers on the table? Peer multiples range between 4.5x and 6.5x for EV sales.
A fair value with a multiple of only 4.5x- 5x would value the company at CHF 1.183 billion- CHF 1.341 billion, resulting in a share price of CHF 155- CHF 177, still potential to the upside. You are selling the company at a multiple of only 3.46x EV sales, well below peer valuation. Why is the Board of Directors selling the company to Advent at a bargain price? The last question, Advent is offering a 53% premium versus the [to six months VWAP]. This price says nothing about the intrinsic value at the cyclical low as it was in the case in 2024. Why are you giving away the growth potential for free? Thank you.
This is André Müller, the Chairman, talking about the process and the Board's decision. The Board has negotiated the share price using internal and also independent external sources. That means we have had a fairness opinion, and the fairness opinions were clearly aligned with the price that we are getting per share. IFBC was our fairness opinion provider, and they are the ones that made the Board aware that this is a fair and positive result of the negotiation. I would now hand over for the PE comments to Stephan or to Camila.
As André mentioned, that was the other question you asked, if Advent was the only bidder. What we can say here is we had bilateral discussions with Advent over this time. We didn't run a sales process in a formal way. Of course, we had regular contact with other industry peers in our usual course of business.
Regarding your question about the 53% premium you mentioned versus the six-month average and the cyclical low, what we can say here is that the company was evaluated considering not only the short-term defense but the long-term business plans they had in place. This went together with the fairness opinion and became our conclusion of what you saw here, which brought the Board to the decision that this is a fair value for a company based on all available input.
Yeah, I see it a little bit different, but you have to wait and see. I can only encourage the competitors out in the market to look at this offer because if they pay this price, they get still all the synergy on top of that. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Sauter Torsten , Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everybody, and thanks for taking my call. I have a technical question. Do you see any sensitive contracts that have the transaction require clearance from any U.S. or Chinese authorities or any other authorities?
Of course, we will go through all appropriate regulatory processes. We don't see a major risk in those proceedings.
Okay. Can I ask what sort of acceptance ratio would such a transaction have to have? By when would we have to gain access to the fairness opinion, please?
The acceptance threshold is at 2/3 of the shares, and the offer for such close will be published around August 27.
Thank you.
Once again, as a reminder, to ask your question, please press star and one on your telephone. Our next question comes from Grau Christoph , AWP. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you very much for taking my question. I just want to ask if your headquarters will be staying in Thalwil, and do you have any plans of further reduction in workforce, and maybe some comments about the management? Will the management stay in place, or are there any changes planned here in this field? Thank you.
First question, headquarters. We are a Swiss company, and we remain a Swiss company. Headquarters in Thalwil, [Advent]. Second question, reduction of headcount. There's no change to the statements we made during our announcement of the first half-year refinance. The major restructuring is behind us. Of course, independent of this acquisition or not, we continue to optimize the organization, but this does not include a major restructuring. Point number three about the management. The management was heavily involved in the discussion with Advent. The management supports this transaction, and the management sees trust from Advent as an investor.
The only people that will be laid off, if I can say so, is the Board of Directors, as it's customary for a change of ownership and going private. The Board of Directors of the current structure will step down at Thalwil.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Rafael Duarte for closing remarks.
Thank you, everybody, for the questions. As a reminder, we have the documents for the public tender offer available at the website zenith-offer.com. There you will see the announcement and the pre-announcement of the public tender offer. As was mentioned before, next week, the further documentation should be available on the same website. If there's anything we can help from our side, please reach out.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines.