America Movil (AMX) has kept its shareholdings below 30% in Dutch telecom firm KPN until now. The ended agreement signaled a possible bid for the entire telecoms company by America Movil. Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire who owns the 29.8% of KPN, is entitled to have the agreement ended after KPN received a hefty bid of Eur8.1 billion from Spain's Telefonica. The bid was for the company's German mobile unit E-Plus. This was according to a KPN official said on Monday.
The end of the deal made America Movil free to increase its holdings in the company. The level of increase could trigger an offer to acquire the entire KPN. The latter is Netherland's largest telecoms firm by sales.
Emmanuel Carlier, an ING analyst, said on a note to clients that the termination of the relationship agreement between AMX and KPN found that the offered sale price of E-Plus to be very low. This increased the chances of getting KPN to be bought as a whole by AMX.
The shares of KPN rose today to 4.7% at 5:03am ET. This was the strongest performance it had in the FTSEurofirst 300 index.
Some analysts stated that America Movil would be stretching itself for the possible full acquisition of KPN. This was because of the current state of the company's balance sheet and its planned share buyback that is in progress.
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