25th Sep 2025 09:27
(Alliance News) - Shares in Petershill Partners PLC soared on Thursday as it announced plans to return funds to shareholders and delist its shares from the London Stock Exchange.
The FTSE 250-listing, founded by Goldman Sachs in 2007, said it had concluded that the company's share price and valuation has not "appropriately reflected the quality and underlying value of the company's assets, its strong financial performance and attractive growth prospects."
As a result, the company intends to return USD921 million, or 415 US cents per share, in cash to shareholders, cancel the shares for all free-float shareholders, and delist the company. The cash return is equivalent to 309 pence per share.
The return of capital will be funded by cash, deferred disposal proceeds and new debt. Including the interim dividend, the total payment is 420.2c per share. This total payment is equivalent to 313p per share, or GBP3.4 billion.
In response, shares in Petershill Partners leapt 33% to 307.71 pence in London on Thursday morning, earlier setting a 52-week high of 310.50p.
Around 79% of shares in Petershill are held by closed-end private funds, who have given their consent to the proposal and undertaken to vote in favour of the reduction of capital resolution.
This will be put to shareholders at a general meeting, expected on November 3.
London-based Petershill believes its "valuation discount" reflects significant macroeconomic, market, geopolitical and industry-specific headwinds which have damped public market investor interest and its small free float and relatively lower levels of trading liquidity.
In addition, the wider investment companies sector has traded at increasingly wider discounts to book value, it pointed out.
The news was delivered alongside half-year results for the six months to June 30.
Pretax profit jumped 75% to USD287.4 million from USD163.9 million a year earlier, while total income grew 29% to USD188.1 million from USD146.3 million.
Total partner distributable earnings increased 8.6% to USD152.3 million from USD140.3 million,
Partner fee-related earnings fell 12% to USD99 million from USD112 million.
Movement in financial assets and liabilities held at fair value totalled USD185.2 million, more than doubling on-year from USD72.3 million.
Full-year guidance was left unchanged for partner fee-related earnings of USD180 million to USD210 million.
The company declared an interim dividend of 5.2 cents, up 4% from 5.0 cents a year ago.
By Jeremy Cutler, Alliance News reporter
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