David Simon
Analyst · Citi
One of my friends in the industry sent me a bunny -- have you ever seen these bunny movies? They're basically done by a little animated bunnies, but they take a movie and do it in 30 seconds. So I wrote some notes about CSC that I thought I would just share, because it was the lot of press, and with the takeover panel rules, you can't really talk to the press and the analytic community about it. So if I could, I'd like to just address it in totality. And this will be, hopefully, I can do it in 30 seconds. But you can go on YouTube and do Bunny movies and pick your favorite movie and you could probably watch it in 30 seconds. In any event, and that's not paid advertising, by the way. I have no idea who does Bunny movies. But let me give you my 30-second summary of CSC. First of all, we've been a supportive passive shareholder for three years, despite their underperformance. We always considered our stake as an option, if and when they decided to sell. The Trafford sale, we thought, had two problems, price and structure, in terms of issuing shares at a discount, which handed control to Whittaker. We asked them to restructure the deal. They wouldn't, despite the market's poor reaction to the deal. Based on our view that they were handing control to Whittaker, we decided to make an indicative offer that was subject to due diligence. We would have never bought the company without due diligence. Management refused to provide due diligence regardless of whatever take-out price we would have come up with, which reinforced our view that they were completely entrenched. They responded with a restructure of the Trafford deal, which we forced, put out a ridiculous, indicative value range, further demonstrating management's focus on entrenchment. The CEO and the press said that we were a nuisance, even though our presence forced a better deal with Trafford and benefited their shareholders. The Chairman said that the shareholders are one of many things they consider as fiduciaries, but not at the top of the list. We never made a firm bid. The company relied on South Africa's shareholder base, which has many different agendas, given they're wanting exposure outside of South Africa. And we're looking forward to them reaching their indicative value of 625p. It sounded like more than 30 seconds. But in a nutshell, that's our view of CSC.