PPC managed to lift group revenue in the nine months to December while it was fending off numerous potential suitors. SA’s largest cement group said in a trading update on Friday that earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) also came out ahead in the period, but that corporate action and “other costs” had negatively weighed on ebitda, despite good operational cost management. In mid-December PPC had rejected global cement producer LafargeHolcim’s nonbinding proposal to buy a controlling stake in the group. It had also dealt with expressions of interest from Nigeria’s Dangote cement group and Irish group CRH, along with a joint partial offer from South African producer AfriSam and Canada’s Fairfax Financial Holdings. “I think those [other costs] would relate to various legal and advisory costs in relation to the … approaches PPC had,” Mish-al Emeran, analyst at Electus Fund Managers, said on Friday. Due diligences, independent valuations, general paper w...
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