Majority shareholders Melstacorp and Aitken Spence Hotel Holdings have launched a joint exit offer for Browns Beach Hotels minority investors at Rs. 30 per share, ahead of the company’s planned delisting from the Colombo Stock Exchange.
The acceptance window opened at 9 am on May 5 and closes at 4.30 pm on June 5, the company said in a stock-exchange filing. Minority holders are not obliged to accept and may keep some or all of their shares; those who wish to retain their stakes “will be entitled to do so.”
Browns Beach Hotels — operator of the Negombo property of the same name — announced in March that it would delist from the CSE’s official list, having arranged with the two majority owners to take out minority shareholders. The Rs. 30 per-share offer is the formal mechanism that closes that process.
The hotelier has been loss-making since 2019 on the back of the Easter Sunday attacks, the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2022 economic crisis. In its earlier disclosure, the company said revenue over the last two years had not been adequate to offset the losses.
The exit offer lands as the broader tourism industry struggles with a sharp March arrivals slowdown tied to the Iran-Israel war and Hormuz disruption, and follows similar consolidation moves elsewhere in the listed hotel sector. Melstacorp shares closed up 0.27% at Rs. 185.50 on Tuesday.
Source: EconomyNext.
