Shares in Purplebricks shot up yesterday amid speculation that Axel Springer was considering buying it.
On investors’ website ADVFN, one person posted: “Axel Springer interested in Purplebricks takeover – Dealreporter – explains the spike.”
The shares at one stage shot up almost 20% to 148p – like a purple rat up a purple drainpipe, as one of our posters put it – but closed at 132p, a rise of almost 7% during the day.
Dealreporter, which covers mergers and acquisitions, and capital markets, is behind a paywall but it did not mention Purplebricks or Axel Springer yesterday on its Twitter account.
Axel Springer has a 26.57% stake in Purplebricks, the latter has confirmed in its annual report, and is the biggest shareholder by some margin.
Purplebricks’ annual report stressed that it will now concentrate on its profitable flagship UK operation and on Canada, after pulling out of the US and Australia markets where it has lost millions.
Comments (6)
Still dropping this afternoon.
Still waiting to hear why Purple Bricks considers it is open to litigation. I think everyone will be glued to the bongo drums and will probably result in a share price free fall?
Past caring now!
Within 24 hours of a story about potential litigation faced by the company, this is a little bit funny.
Drive up the price with talk of a takeover and then dump the stock perhaps?
Couldn’t agree more!
I really feel sorry for anyone taking over an empty shell hoping there’s some sort of value left in it.
In Poker it’s called being “pot committed”.