Dole CEO makes buyout bid; values co. at $1.07B
WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. — Dole Food’s Chairman and CEO David Murdock and his family are offering to buy the business with a bid that values the entire company at approximately $1.07 billion.
Shares jumped in premarket trading on Tuesday.
Murdock and other family members are making an unsolicited offer of $12 per share for the shares of the company that they don’t already own. That’s an 18 percent premium to Dole’s closing price Monday of $10.20. Dole Food Co. currently has about 89.5 million outstanding shares, according to FactSet.
The fresh fruit and vegetable company said that its board will be meeting over the next several days to create a special committee of independent directors to assess the bid.
Dole also said that it is only in the beginning stages of evaluating the offer and that no decisions have been made by the board about the offer.
Dole, which is based in Westlake Village, Calif., had 2012 revenue from continuing operations of $4.2 billion. In March the company reported a fourth-quarter adjusted loss from continuing operations and revenue that was below Wall Street’s expectations.
Its stock added $1.65, or 16.1 percent, to $11.85 before the market open.