MotisIEX schreef op 16 december 2022 09:19:
RYK VAN NIEKERK: How much of the €10 billion debt arises from the settlement agreement that Steinhoff reached with shareholders and paid out to those who lost money in Steinhoff’s 2017 implosion?
JEAN PIERRE VERSTER: A small number, actually, Ryk. The overwhelming majority of the €10 billion is old Steinhoff debt, from before the collapse happened. The legal settlement in progress involves a smaller amount, part of it in Pepkor shares as well, not everything in cash. So the overwhelming majority of the debt and thus the reason for this reorganisation is not the legal issues that Steinhoff endured, but rather the debt that Steinhoff accumulated before their implosion.
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RYK VAN NIEKERK: So can one consider it Steinhoff’s sunset? The implosion was in 2017, and the company continued doing business for five years. Is this basically its end?
JEAN PIERRE VERSTER: Yes, largely so.
It has had a five-year twilight, but the sun is now setting on ordinary shareholders.
The creditors will at the end of the day control the assets within Steinhoff; Steinhoff itself as a holding company will probably cease to exist, and current Steinhoff shareholders will end up with either nothing in that situation, or after the restructuring will hold a 20% interest in an unlisted holding company, which sometime in the distant future might hold a little value. But there is also a chance that that holding company’s shares themselves will also end up worthless in the long term.
RYK VAN NIEKERK: So, if the shareholders now choose the 20% option by approving the transaction, to whom would they be able to sell their shares in future?
JEAN PIERRE VERSTER: Shareholders can currently sell their Steinhoff shares on the JSE, or sell them in Frankfurt, and that is why we are seeing shareholders scrambling to sell, and the price dropping sharply. In the future the mechanism will probably be a swap transaction where Steinhoff shareholders will give up their shares and receive a 20% share in some other entity, receiving other shares.
Those shares will not be listed – meaning that it will be extremely difficult to buy and sell shares in an unlisted business at that stage.
So Steinhoff shareholders now have a very small window of opportunity to sell their Steinhoff shares, after which it will be extremely difficult to dispose of their shares in this unlisted future holding company.
RYK VAN NIEKERK: Who would buy Steinhoff shares now from existing shareholders who are scrambling, as you say, to sell and get rid of their shares?
JEAN PIERRE VERSTER: Yes, I would say ten to one it would be speculators who think that quite possibly some long-term value could remain in this new holding company; but that is truly speculative, Ryk. There is so much uncertainty and the creditors are so entrenched in their powerful position that it would be foolish for a minority shareholder to be in an unlisted company – making it a somewhat risky speculation for anyone to buy a Steinhoff share at this point.
RYK VAN NIEKERK: Jean Pierre, thank you for your time this evening. That was Jean Pierre Verster of Protea Capital Management.