Busy Bees enters bidding for Mayfield Childcare with proposed $1.35 cash offer

Busy Bees Early Learning Australia has made a non-binding proposal to purchase ASX listed early childhood education and care provider (ECEC) Mayfield Childcare for $1.35 per share in cash. 

The move comes less than two weeks after Mayfield received an initial all cash offer of $1.28 per share from its largest shareholder, Genius Childcare, a business it has had close ties with for the last fourteen months after the acquisition of 14 Genius centres in October 2022. 

The Busy Bees offer represents a five per cent premium to that offered by Genius and if successful will mark the second such acquisition of a listed company by the group after it succeeded in acquiring, and subsequently delisting, Think Childcare in October 2021. 

The updated offer values Mayfield at around 7.3x CY2022 EBITDA and the price of $1.35 represents a 40.0 per cent premium to the closing price of $0.965 per share on 1 December 2022.

Mayfield has confirmed that at this stage the Busy Bees proposal is unsolicited, conditional and non binding in nature, as was the Genius proposal, and that there is no assurance at all that either proposal will result in a transaction.

The company also confirmed that shareholders do not need to take any action in relation to either the Busy Bees Proposal or the Genius Proposal at this time and they will continue to keep the market informed of any material developments.