Kewill rockets on surprise $170 mn bid

LONDON/BANGALORE: Kewill Plc, the the British software firm which provides software to freight forwarders, distribution companies and express parcel groups, said on Friday that it received an approach pitched at 130 pence per share, sending its stock up as much as 27 per cent to a nine-year high.

The indicative offer values the company, at 116.8 million pounds ($170.3 million).

U.S. technology group Oracle or its arch rival Germany's SAP could be behind the approach, said KBC Peel Hunt analyst Simon Strong.

Merger and acquisition activity in the technology sector has sprung back to life as the shift to mobile and cloud computing changes the IT landscape, and companies position themselves for an economic upturn.

SAP made the latest move on Wednesday, when it agreed to buy database system firm Sybase Inc for $5.8 billion in a bid to move ahead of Oracle in the mobile data market.

Strong said a bidder would probably have to increase their offer to secure Kewill. He said he believed shareholders should not accept anything less than 175 pence per share.

"It (Kewill) operates in a logistics niche and both of those two, which are major software houses ... don't have very strong products in that area and Kewill consistently wins against them in pitches and so that's normally a recipe for consolidation," said Strong.

Shares in Kewill, whose customers include Nintendo, FedEx and Whirlpool, were up 23 percent at 123 pence at 1315 GMT, after earlier rising 27 percent to their highest level since 2001.