Thailand’s listed retail and trading firm Berli Jucker PCL (BJC) expects to close one acquisition deal valued at 1 billion baht ($30 million approximately), in Thailand by the third quarter of this year. It is also negotiating to acquire a few companies both in the country and abroad.
BJC’s investor relation officer Nuthathai Thanachaihirun said that the target company was the manufacturer of consumer products, however, she declined to give more information about the deal at the moment.
Earlier, BJC had planned to buy Metro Cash & Carry Vietnam, but the shareholders rejected the proposed deal twice as they were concerned about the impact of such acquisition on the company’s financial.
TCC Holding, the parent company of BJC, will continue the negotiation and expects to finalise the deal with Metro Vietnam within this year. “The Metro Vietnam’s deal has continued. The latest value of the deal we proposed to the shareholders was 655 million Euro. If we consider the deal at the current foreign exchange, it will decrease from 30 billion baht to 24 billion baht due to the weaker Euro currency,” she said.
The company would like to get Metro Vietnam because it has a strong distribution network, including the warehouses and logistics, in Vietnam.
BJC allocated the budget of 4 billion baht for investments this year. Of the total, it will spend around 500-600 million baht on boosting its production capacity of lids from 2 billion pieces to 3 billion pieces a year. About 500 million baht will be spent on expanding the capacity at its glass-manufacturing plant and the can-production plant in Vietnam, and the rest for acquiring attractive businesses.
Nuthathai said that the revenue in 2015 should grow by 10 per cent from 44.1 billion baht in 2014 and the net profit should be higher than 1.67 billion baht in 2014, mainly due to the cost-reduction plan.
“Although there is no sign of economic recovery in the first half of this year, we believe that business will pick up in the second half due mainly to the government’s policies to stimulate domestic consumption and investment,” she cited.
The revenue in this quarter will not be much different from 10.6 billion baht in the first quarter, as the domestic spending power has not recovered yet. However, the net profit is expected to increase from 529.08 million baht in last quarter because of better cost management.
