MIXI’s offer to acquire PointsBet has successfully passed a shareholder vote, with contender Betr now claiming its vote has been purposefully excluded.
The vote took place during a 25 June meeting of PointsBet shareholders. Announcing the subsequent results, Company Secretary Andrew Hensher stated that 95.7% of votes were cast in favour of MIXI’s proposal, while only 4.31% opposed it.
Betr has contested the results. The company is the biggest shareholder in PointsBet with a total of 19.9% of shares, which it intended to leverage as a counter-vote in the meeting. However, it is now claiming that its stance has been deliberately omitted by the meeting’s Chair.
“It appears that the chair of the meeting has impermissibly excluded Betr’s vote against the scheme and provided no basis for doing so. The company confirms it validly lodged its proxy vote against the scheme as recorded in the PointsBet announcement this morning,” Betr’s Board of Directors said.
In this regard, the company demanded a recount of the votes taking into account its share and warned that if the results are not immediately reviewed, it will challenge them at the second court hearing scheduled for June 26.
Potential sabotage?
PointsBet has released a statement of its own, fully dismissing Betr’s claims of its vote not being counted. In fact, PointsBet Chief Financial Officer Alister Lui has ensured that Betr did not cast a vote at all during the meeting.
The poll showcasing the final results was overseen by a representative of PointsBet’s share registry, Computershare.
“The information included in PointsBet’s announcement earlier today accurately reflects the outcome of that poll as recorded by Computershare and confirmed by Computershare prior to the release of PointsBet’s announcement,” Lui added.
Computershare had confirmed with PointsBet that a Senior Officer from Betr virtually logged into the meeting and subsequently revoked Betr’s vote on its behalf prior to the closing of the poll.
“This person then did not lodge any votes for Betr at the Scheme Meeting. As noted above, this explanation is consistent with the records of the Scheme Meeting maintained by Computershare,” PointsBet’s statement further read.
From PointsBet’s point of view, the scheme was validly approved and proceeded to the second court hearing on June 26.
Comparison of Offers
In February, MIXI first presented its offer — AU$1.06 ($0.69) per PointsBet share, valuing the company at AU$353 million ($229 million).
Later, Betr entered the bidding war against MIXI by offering AU$360 million ($234 million) in an attempt to shake up the Australian market, which is dominated by major players such as Tabcorp, Entertain, and Flutter.
In early June, MIXI raised its offer by 13.2%, setting a price of AU$1.20 ($0.78) per share, reflecting a total value of AU$402 million ($261 million).
Betr made a final attempt by proposing an exchange of 3.81 Betr shares for one PointsBet share, which they estimated to be equivalent to AU$1.22 ($0.79) per PointsBet share (at a price of AU$0.32 ($0.21) per Betr share).
Nevertheless, PointsBet favored MIXI’s offer, noting that the fixed price of AU$1.20 per share provided greater stability compared to Betr’s more volatile offer.
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