The bid is ridiculously low and opportunistic – keep the benefits of SD-Scicon’s turnround, chairman John Jackson advised shareholders yesterday in a document fronted with an enormous underlined IGNORE as SD-Scicon came out fighting in its effort to defend against Cray Electronics Plc’s bid for the company. SD-Scicon reckons that the cash value of the bid is less than the value of the French company alone, leaving the UK and US businesses in for less than nothing. It points out that Cray’s software business is one fourteenth the size of SD-Scicon and queries how Cray could aspire to manage a people business of our scale. It disparages Cray by suggesting that the company has massive debts, does not pay dividends, and says nothing about the quality of its profits. Cray’s share price could collapse if it returned to a more conventional market rating, it suggests. SD-Scicon says that profits for the first four months of the current fiscal year were UKP3.04m and it forecasts not less than UKP4.5m pre-tax for the first half. It also asserts that the new management is performing and that the company has a clearly defined strategy. The company insists that the problem of fixed price contract over-runs is now under control. It is also asking 25% shareholder British Aerospace Plc, which has accepted the Cray offer and indemnified its costs to the extent of UKP500,000, to put up UKP500,000 to help fund SD-Scicon’s defence as well.
