Bay of Plenty-based power company Trustpower announced a $125 million takeover bid for King Country Energy (KCE) this week .
Trustpower, majority owned by Infratil, will pay $5 a share in cash in a full takeover offer, provided it gets at least 70.2 per cent of the company, or a lower price of $4.78 a share if it falls short of its target.
The company has entered into a lock-up arrangement with Todd Corp's Nova Energy for 54 per cent of the central North Island electricity generator and retailer. The other key shareholder in KCE is King Country Electric Power Trust, which owns 20 per cent.
KCE owns and operates four small hydro generation stations in the King Country and the Mangahao hydro generation station near Palmerston North. Together these stations have a combined installed capacity of 53.7MW and produce on average 191GWh per annum. KCE also has about 17,500 electricity customer connections with close to 70 per cent located in its local network.
Trustpower chief executive Vince Hawksworth said the company had always felt those sorts of Central North Island assets would work well in its overall portfolio.