Rubis Énergie to takeover Kenol Kobil

A day after a huge block of shares of Kenol Kobil, exchanged hands on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), came an announcement that Rubis Énergie intended to buy out all the remaining shares and delist the company.

Rubis had acquired 24.99% of Kenol from Wells Petroleum, at Kshs 15.30 per share on October 23, in a deal that was the highlight of the day at the NSE. The offer to other shareholders of Kenol, to buy the shares at Kshs 23 per share, a 53% premium, values the oil market leader in Kenya and the East Africa region, with 350 retail outlets, at Kshs 36 billion ($353 million).

Making the announcement in Nairobi was the Rubis Energie  CEO Christian Cochet and CFO Bruno Krief. French company Rubis operates over 50 subsidiaries and its downstream business had 2017 sales revenues of Euros 2.7 billion and net income of Euros 187 million while its midstream business has sales of Euros 895 million and net income of Euros 53 million. It is a subsidiary of Rubis SCA Group which is listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange.

The company which operates in Southern Africa, Western Africa, North Africa and islands off the continent, intends to appoint a majority of the board of directors and use Kenol to extend its reach in East Africa as a part of Rubis operations and development strategy through acquisitions which may mean lower dividend payments. 

If the deals succeeds, they will pay Wells an amount equal to the difference in the price they paid on October 23 and what other Kenol shareholders will get. Rubis intends to acquire the other 75% of the company in addition to new shares from Kenol CEO David Ohana who has already undertaken to sell the shares which were granted to him through the Kenol ESOP to Rubis. Once they get the approval of 90% of Kenol shareholders, they intend to delist the company and will move to trigger this once they get to over 75% of shares. The transaction advisors are Stanbic Bank Kenya and SBG Securities who also double up as the sponsoring broker and lead acceptance agent.

However, a few hours after receiving a notice about the Rubis cash offer for Kenol, Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority announced that it was launching an investigation into suspicious trades in relation to the takeover transaction and asked Kenya’s Central Depository and Settlement Corporation to place a freeze on the suspected accounts.

The Rubis deal comes a few years after Kenol tried to engineer a majority sale to Puma Energy and Kenol is also in the process of acquiring fuel stations in Rwanda land Uganda in two separate deals.

Excerpts from the 2016 Kenol AGM of shareholders.