AGL shares at least steadied yesterday after the solid 7.7% sell-off on Tuesday in the wake of news of a firm but indicative approach to telco Vocus at $4.85 a share and the $100 million cut to expected 2019-20 earnings from a lengthy electricity generator outage at the Loy Yang station in Victoria.
The shares hit a day’s high of $19.79 then faded in the afternoon to close at $19.55.
While that was a gain of 0.7%, it was a long way from recouping Tuesday’s loss.
It seems investors have AGL on a sort of suspicion list as many can’t see the logic for the Vocus bid.
AGL Energy CEO, Brett Redman tried to alleviate that suspicion on Wednesday, saying in Melbourne that the company has no plans to break up Vocus.
He told media in Melbourne that AGL instead would aim to grow the combined businesses.
According to an AAP reports Mr. Redman said AGL saw Vocus giving it a leg up in being able to offer new energy and data-blended products, although in the long run there may be parts of the Vocus business that were “not mission critical” to that objective.
“At this point, we haven’t said that there’s anything that we would expect to exit,” Redman said.
“We’re not going into this with a mindset of a break-up. We’re going into this with a mindset of growing and combining the businesses,” AAP reported him as telling the media on Wednesday.
