Nasdaq-listed automotive materials supplier China XD Plastics Co. Ltd. is trying again to become a private company, announcing May 8 that Chairman Jie Han is leading a renewed effort to buy out the remaining shareholders.
Harbin, China-based XD said in a statement that it's received a buyout offer from Han and a British Virgin Islands-based company, XD Engineering Plastics Company Ltd., that it said is wholly owned by Han.
Han and the buyer group own approximately 50.1 percent of the share capital of the company and have about 70 percent of the voting power, the company said.
XD said the offer, at $1.10 a share, is a 19.5 percent premium over the share price for the last 30 trading days and a 4.9 percent premium over the share price over the last 60 trading days.
It's the second time in recent years that Han has tried to take the company private.
Han made a buyout offer in 2017 in a partnership with an affiliate of private equity firm Morgan Stanley in Asia, at $5.21 a share.
But that offer was sharply criticized by other shareholders for undervaluing the company and in October, after the proposal had languished for more than two years, Morgan Stanley formally told China XD it was withdrawing from the offer. Morgan Stanley had invested $100 million in China XD in 2011.
The company also announced May 11 that it had formed a committee of three independent members of its board of directors to evaluate this latest privatization offer.
China XD has also said in recent stock filings that, in accordance with a Securities and Exchange Commission order, it was delaying filing its 2019 earnings reports because of difficulties in its operations in China caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The report was originally due May 15.