20th Jan 2015 08:10
LONDON (Alliance News) - 3i Infrastructure PLC Tuesday said it will sell its entire stake in UK train leasing company Eversholt Rail Group to a Hong Kong-based infrastructure company, generating estimated proceeds of about GBP358 million.
Eversholt is one of three train rolling stock leasing companies in the UK, and it owns about 28% of the current UK passenger train fleet. The leasing companies lease the stock to the train operating companies, and Eversholt leases to 11 of those operators.
Eversholt was valued at GBP240.8 million on September 30, 2014 and GBP160.3 million at the end of March in the same year, 3i Infrastructure said in a statement. It had received a GBP15.5 million distribution from Eversholt just last month.
3i Infrastructure acquired its interest in Eversholt Rail in December 2010 as part of a consortium with Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and STAR Capital Partners with its co-investor PGGM. All three of those investors have decided to sell their stakes to CK Investments SARL, a company jointly owned by Hong Kong-based Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings Ltd and Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd.
The enterprise value of the transaction is approximately GBP2.5 billion, and the deal needs to be cleared by the EU Commission in its anti-trust role, 3i Infrastructure said. It expects the deal to close in March.
"While 3i Infrastructure generally aims to hold its core investments over the long term, it will sell investments from time to time where this generates significant additional value for shareholders and it is in this context that we have taken the decision to sell our shareholding in Eversholt Rail," 3i Infrastructure Chairman Peter Sedgwick said in a statement.
"We carefully evaluated the price offered against our assessment of the potential for the business, as well as the impact on our investment portfolio of selling this investment," he added.
Sedgwick added that the company has been busy developing a pipeline of new investment opportunities and will be bidding on a number of "core" opportunities over the coming months.
By Steve McGrath; [email protected]; @stevemcgrath1
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