Crown Eyeglass seeks private company status

The directors have made the 90p-a-share offer under a newly incorporated company, Momentai, and it is expected that the result of the shareholders' decision will be known this summer. The offer values the existing share capital of Crown Eyeglass at &\#163;1.44m. The company has 31 company owned 'optical centres' in the UK with 20 franchises, and has 20 outlets in Sweden operating under the 'Direkt Optik' banner. Alan Watson, the independent director, said: 'Against a background of poor trading conditions in Sweden, an increasingly competitive environment in the UK and the low stock market rating of the company, I believe the offer provides Crown Eyeglass shareholders with the opportunity of realising their investment on a fair and reasonable basis.' The offer coincided with the group's preliminary results for the year to April 2 2000, which saw Crown Eyeglass achieve profits before tax up from &\#163;7,000 last year to &\#163;215,000 (turnover up from &\#163;9.8m to &\#163;10.7m). However, chairman Joe Lee issued a cautious statement, commenting that the strength of the pound was making it even more difficult to turn the Swedish subsidiary into profit, and that trading conditions in Britain were tough. '[In the UK] we are still faced with operating in an increasingly competitive environment,' he said. 'We intend to maintain a prudent strategy and view expansion in a cautious manner.' He said that because the company's share price had been disappointing, and that the business had not sought to expand through an acquisitive strategy, the directors believed there was no benefit to Crown Eyeglass retaining its quotation on the Alternative Investment Market. The executive directors, their immediate families and a related family trust hold, in aggregate, 584,875 Crown Eyeglass shares, with Mr Lee's daughter, Gillian Douglas, owning 64,000.