Yesterday, USU announced to have reached a delisting-agreement with AUSUM GmbH (Udo Strehl) and NUNUS GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of AUSUM. While AUSUM already holds 53.7% of voting rights in USU, NUNUS currently does not hold any shares. On the basis of the agreement, NUNUS will offer the shareholders of USU approximately € 18.50 per share in the context of a voluntary public delisting offer. USU will submit an application to revoke the admission of the shares to the regulated market as well as all OTC markets already before the end of the offer period.

Mind you, in an initial statement on the intention to delist on March 12^th, it was stated that the offer price should be expected to be equivalent to the statutory minimum price, e.g. the volume-weighted average price of the past six months. According to our calculations, this would have resulted in an offer price of € 17.00 per share.

While the actual offer price is now seen to be some 9% above our and markets expectations, it is still way below the intrinsic fair value of € 30, according to our DCF valuation model (2.5% LT growth, 7.6% WACC, 12.5% TY EBIT margin).

Our view: Although € 18.50 is still not a fair offer (eNuW), we advise investors who have no intention of being invested in a highly illiquid asset to tender their shares once the delisting offer has been made. While we previously advised investors to HOLD the stock in anticipation of a higher-than-expected offer, we now change our recommendation to SELL at an increase PT of € 18.50, as we do not expect anymore upside. Yet, given the vast discount to the intrincis value, the case might be of interest for special situation investors, who are eyeing for a potential squeeze-out at a later stage.