At a time when wine stocks seem out of favour, two of the major players in Western Australia’s wine industry, Evans & Tate chairman Franklin Tate and Australian Wine Holdings director Michael Calneggia, have increased their holdings.
In Mr Tate’s case the increase in the value of his stake is $1.5 million, taking the value of his total stake in Evans & Tate to nearly $44.6 million.
Mr Calneggia’s increase in his AWH holding is 9.7 million shares worth $25,061. That increases the value of his holding in the wine player to $1.4 million.
However, these increases are not through simple on-market trades.
In Mr Tate’s case the increase comes as fellow Evans & Tate director Graham Cranswick-Smith decreased the value of his holding by $1.5 million.
That share ownership change is due to the second tranche of a deferred sale deal struck when Evans & Tate merged with Cranswick Premium Wines.
The company said the share sale deal was announced to the market in February 2003.
There are to be two more tranches of share sales to Mr Tate.
Each tranche will involve Mr Tate buying 670,000 Evans & Tate shares.
Tranche C is due after September 2004 and tranche D is due to occur between July 2005 and June 2007.
At the current Evans & Tate share price of about $1.60 those two sales would be worth more than $2.1 million.
That would increase the value of Mr Tate’s stake in the listed winemaker to more than $46 million.
He currently has a holding worth $44.5 million.
In Mr Calneggia’s case the share holding increase is due to a liquidation deal struck by former vineyard scheme manager Blue Wren.
The former Evans & Tate director said he took a holding in Blue Wren Estates back in 1995 when it was a managed investment scheme put together by Goundrey. It owned several vineyards around Mt Barker.
The MIS ended up selling the vineyards to Goundrey owner Jack Bendat.
At that stage Mr Calneggia had a 20 per cent interest in the company.
He said his involvement in Blue Wren drifted when he joined the Evans & Tate board.
When he went to Australian Wine Holdings he bought one of Blue Wren’s businesses, Wine Shack.
AWH continued to acquire key parts of Blue Wren.
Mr Calneggia said Blue Wren got into difficulty.
“They decided to put the business into voluntary liquidation and pay out Blue Wren shareholders in AWH shares,” he said.
