John and Robert Kirby, the sons of Village Roadshow founder Roc Kirby, have told the Australian Securities Exchange that they are considering launching a proposal to take the cinema, theme parks and film production company private.
John and Robert Kirby and fellow executive director Graham Burke control around 61% of the company’s shares. Based on the company’s current market capitalisation of $151 million they would need to spend around $59 million to acquire the rest of the company.
Shares in Village Roadshow have fallen from around $1.80 to around $1.35 over the last 12 months, but have risen by around 50% in the last month.
John and Robert Kirby were valued at $181 million on this year’s BRW Rich 200.
Village says it has yet to receive a formal offer from the trio and says “there is no assurance that any offer or proposal will be received by Village or put to Village shareholders”.
“VRC has informed Village that its work on the Proposal is substantially incomplete and that a number of key issues are yet to be finalised, including the terms of any proposal and funding for any proposal,” the company said this morning.
Village Roadshow has appointed UBS and Minter Ellison as advisers ahead of any bid, and will form a separate board committee to assess any proposal.
Roc Kirby founded Village in the 1950s and built the company from its humble roots as a drive-in theatre operator into one of Australia’s largest cinema companies. In the last two decades the company has expended into theme parks (it owns Movie World and Sea World on the Gold Coast) and film production (hits include The Matrix films and Oceans series).
Village also announced today that it will sell its Greek cinema, film distribution and film production business to a private investor.
The estimated profit from the deal is expected to be in the range of $10 million to $15 million, subject to the exchange rate.
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
