Farmers Edge is going private again.
The Manitoba-founded ag tech firm has inked a deal with majority shareholder Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. to sell all common shares at 35 cents apiece, the company announced late last month.
The move comes nearly three years after Farmers Edge’s initial public offering to become a publicly traded company. At the time, shares started at $17.
A newly formed Fairfax subsidiary intends to purchase, in cash, all common shares Fairfax and its affiliates don’t already own, Farmers Edge said in a news release. Fairfax currently owns more than 61 percent of the company’s shares.
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Farmers Edge announced it was considering a proposal from Fairfax in November with an offer of 25 cents per share.
The transaction is expected to be closed in the first quarter of 2024, following approval by shareholders, the release said.
Farmers Edge was founded in 2005 in Pilot Mound, Man., by agronomists Wade Barnes and Curtis MacKinnon. Barnes left the company in March 2022.
On the day the company went public in March 2021, Barnes told media the company would use the new funding — totalling a little more than $125 million — to build on its vision of digital farming.
“We’ll be scaling up our teams to grow the business,” he said.
“We’ll also be developing new products.”
The digital agronomy firm has since been beset by financial problems. In August, it announced layoffs of 20 percent of its workforce and consolidation of operations in North America. It also shuttered its Australian operation.
