(new: share price and analyst commentary)

FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - The offer by major investor EQT for the outstanding Suse shares caused the share price to shoot up on Friday. In main trading on Xetra, it shot up by around 60 percent to 15.36 euros. The day before, the shares had reached a record low of EUR 9.605. EQT is offering shareholders EUR 16 per share less an interim dividend.

According to the investment firm Jefferies, the investor EQT is bowing to the inevitable. The shareholder structure of the software company has always proved to be an obstacle to investments, wrote analyst Charles Brennan. In this respect, it is not surprising that the major shareholder is now making a takeover bid and then wants to delist Suse.

The total amount of the interim dividend would be 183 to 584 million euros, depending on how many shareholders accept the offer. According to his understanding, there is no minimum acceptance threshold for the delisting of the shares. Shareholders focused on liquidity are therefore likely to accept the offer.

Analyst Toby Ogg from JPMorgan noted that the purchase price of EUR 16 per Suse share represents a premium of just over half of the volume-weighted average price over the past 30 trading days. The offer values the company at around 3.5 billion euros and is roughly in line with market valuations in the European software industry./bek/jha/