Gopeng declines YTL offer

YTL Cement said Gopeng Bhd has declined the general offer the cement company made for the latter’s 35.16 per cent stake in Perak Hanjoong Simen Sdn Bhd. YTL Cement said it received Gopeng’s undertaking late last week. Gopeng is the holder of the remaining 117.74 million shares in Perak Hanjoong. YTL Cement made the offer on December 23 last year when a 32.74 per cent stake in Perak Hanjoong it bought from Danaharta Managers Sdn Bhd for RM109.7 million lifted its shareholding to 64.84 per cent. In July last year, it took over South Korea’s Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Co Ltd’s 32.10 per cent stake in Perak Hanjoong in a RM75.3 million deal. Having had to comply with the mandatory general offer rule, YTL Cement would have had to spend just above RM100 million more for the rest of the shares in Perak Hanjoong, having said it would pay RM1 for each of the remaining shares outside of its control.  

Perak Hanjoong is Malaysia’s second-largest integrated cement producer, controlling a quarter of the domestic cement and clinker market.   The company, which operates two plants in Padang Rengas, Perak, has the capacity to produce 3Mt of clinker and 3.4Mt of cement a year for both the local and export markets.   It also has a cement depot and packing plant in Batu Caves, Selangor, with an annual capacity of 600,000t. Its products are marketed under the trade name, "Camel".  

Analysts saw YTL’s move to buy Perak Hanjoong as en effort to enable the YTL cement unit to expand its regional market. With Gopeng having declined the offer made for its shares in Perak Hanjoong last week, Perak Hanjoong will remain as a 64.84 per cent subsidiary of YTL Cement.