Rumours are reaching FT Alphaville that nTelos, a US regional wireless company, is a takeover target for Shenandoah Telecommunications.
Shenandoah (better known as Shentel) has been putting together a knockout $200m offer for the Virginia-based mobile broadband provider, a nearly 50 per cent premium to Tuesday’s closing value, according to people claiming direct knowledge of the negotiations. A price of around $9.25 a share has been all but agreed, they said, against Tuesday’s close of $6.20.
Plans could still change, talks may yet collapse and nothing in this life is ever certain, one of the people cautioned. They suggested we put our traditional RAW warning on the story, so here it is.
A deal, while small in scale and local in context, could be seen as another small step in the worldwide trend towards fixed and mobile broadband convergence. Shentel (market cap: $760m) specialises in providing rural internet connections in the eastern states of Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland, which NTelos lists as its three biggest markets.
Adele Skolits, Shentel’s CFO and VP of finance, said the company doesn’t respond to speculation and wouldn’t comment further. A spokesman for NTelos wasn’t answering his phone.
The 12-month share price graph for nTelos looks like this.