Bharti Shipyard acquires Tebma Shipyards for Rs76 crore

Bharati Shipyard Ltd has acquired a 51-per cent stake in loss-making Chennai-based Tebma Shipyards Ltd, for around Rs76 crore, a move that has cheered investors.

Bharati Shipyard would acquire the stake buying new equity shares of Tebma Shipyards at Rs19.20 per share increasing the company's equity capital to Rs77.36 crore from the existing Rs7.78 crore. The balance shareholding of the acquired company would be distributed between its original promoters ICICI Venture, and the public.

Bharati stands to benefit from this acquisition, but it would have to work on  improving the profitability of Tebma Shipyards.

According to the latest publicly available data, the company incurred a net loss of Rs76 crore for fiscal 2009 and a net loss of Rs55 crore in the first half ended September 2009.

The accumulated losses on Tebma Shipyards' books are Rs188 crore, with a the net debt of Rs335 crore, which after the acquisition would stand at Rs260 crore, if the entire equity purchase cost were to go towards debt repayment.

With the acquisition, Bharati-Tebma would have nine shipyards. According to Tebma Shipyards, it has an unexecuted order book of Rs750 crore.