Care REIT (CRT) has agreed terms over a deal to be acquired by the New York-listed CareTrust REIT, the board has announced.
CareTrust will pay 108p per share if CRT shareholders agree to the deal, representing a 32.8% premium to its closing share price.
CRT launched in 2017, investing in a portfolio of healthcare real estate assets.
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While its assets have been valued at c.£673m, the trust’s shares trade at a 31.8% discount to net asset value.
In a stock exchange announcement, the CRT board said that the trust has suffered from recent market issues affecting the wider real estate and investment trust sectors, including a persistent and wide discount to NAV, investors’ cost of capital increasing with a higher interest rate background, and “reduced access to equity capital markets, especially for smaller market capitalisation stocks”.
“This has hindered CRT plc’s ability to grow and exploit the opportunities presented by both economies of scale and a highly fragmented care home market,” the board said.
Dave Sedgwick, president and CEO of CareTrust, added the US-listed REIT had been looking at the UK for an entry point for “some time”.
“We believe we have found it in the Care REIT plc platform, which has assembled what we consider to be an excellent, diversified portfolio of UK assets and operator partnerships,” he said.
“We look forward to combining the Care REIT platform with our own and expanding our mission of growing with great operators in the UK.”