Frasers Property TQ5 has acquired Frasers Property Technology (FPTech) from its 81.8%-owned subsidiary, Frasers Property Thailand (FPT) for a consideration of 460.0 million baht ($18.0 million). Frasers Property Technology was a wholly-owned subsidiary of FPT prior to the sale.
The group, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Frasers Property Holdings (Thailand) or FPHT, had entered into a share purchase agreement (SPA) on May 10 and completed the acquisition of FPTech on the same day.
FPTech holds about 51.0% of the shares in STT GDC Thailand, which is a joint venture (JV) with ST Telemedia GDC Thailand. The JVCo mainly provides data centre co-location services, which include the provision of co-location space, as well as racks, power, in-building connectivity services and so on. On May 10, STT GDC – or ST Telemedia Global Data Centres – were said to be mulling a pre-initial public offering (IPO) round of US$1 billion ($1.32 billion).
According to Frasers Property, the acquisition is part of its ongoing efforts to sharp the focus of its strategic business platforms and gain insights into the data centre business. The acquisition leaves FPT able to focus its resources on its core asset classes, adds the group.
Under the SPA, FPT sold 43.7 million shares of FPTech – or 99.99% of the total shares in the latter – to FPHT. FPT also procured the sale by the two minority shareholders of FPTech to Frasers (Thailand), the holding company of FPHT. The two minority shareholders, Automation Asset and Frasers Property Industrial (Thailand), each held two ordinary shares in FPTech.
Under the SPA, FPT also procured the sale by Frasers Property Industrial (Thailand) of one ordinary share of the JVCo to FPHT at par value of 10 baht.
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In connection with the acquisition, Frasers Property provided a shareholder’s guarantee to replace the existing shareholder’s guarantee provided by FPT for the OCBC loan entered into by FPTech. The value of the OCBC loan – including the principal and interest payable – is 1.44 billion baht.
As at May 11, the JVCo owns a land plot in Hua Mak, Bangkok, Thailand, where it operates STT Bangkok 1. STT Bangkok 2 will also be constructed on the same plot.
Both STT Bangkok 1 and STT Bangkok 2 are carrier-neutral data centres, which form the STT Bangkok hyperscale data centre campus, that’s built to support growing digital infrastructure demand.
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The land plot and STT Bangkok 1 was valued at 7.3 billion baht.
As at 9.50am, shares in Frasers Property are trading 0.5 cents lower or 0.57% down at 88 cents.
