In an environment of market volatility National Storage REIT (ASX: NSR) shares held relatively firm throughout all of last week, presumably buoyed by the hope US suitor Public Storage would still go ahead with a takeover offer.
But those hopes have been dashed today after the company came out of a trading halt this afternoon to announced Public Storage had withdrawn its offer due to the situation with Covid-19.
The American company was the last remaining bidder, after Hong Kong's Gaw Capital Partners (GCP) and another US group Warburg Pincus pulled out of the race late last month.
"Whilst we spent some time pursuing three unsolicited indicative offers that may have been attractive opportunities to maximise value for our securityholders we remained focussed on our core business throughout those discussions," says NSR managing director Andrew Catsoulis.
"NSR will continue to focus on its strategy of maximising returns via our diversified revenue streams as outlined in our 1H FY20 results discussion with our securityholders."
Public Storage had been offering to buy the company at $2.40, but by the time March came around shares were trading more in line with Warburg Pincus' previous offer of $2.
This week however the shares started to plummet, and this morning they dropped 18.9 per cent to $1.46 before a trading halt was announced.
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