Aptech Training hit the 20% upper deck in early trades on Tuesday as the market greeted the news that SSI is buying promoter stake in the company with glee.

However, the scrip later came off the high and, by 10:20 IST, was trading at Rs 37, up 15.99%. Over 184,000 Aptech shares were traded on BSE by then.

The scrip has proved very buoyant of late in anticipation of the imminent stake sale. It rose 25.2% to its current level from Rs 29.55 on 7 February 2003. In the prior 16 sessions between 16 January and 7 February 2003, the scrip of Aptech Training lost 33% to Rs 29.55 from Rs 44.15 on news that the sell-off deal had hit a roadblock.

The other party to the stake sale deal, SSI's scrip also jumped 3.52% to Rs 88.30 on Tuesday.

According to an announcement by SSI, as a first step, SSI will buy out the 27.18% promoters' stake in Aptech. The agreed price for the sale is Rs 49.75 (a 35.37% premium to the current price) for each of the 49,32,408 shares on sale, amounting to a consideration of Rs 24.54 crore. As a next step, SSI plans to make an open offer to raise its stake to over 47% in Aptech.

With an arrangement to acquire 27.18% shares of Aptech Training and along with 0.5% of equity shares held by persons acting in concert, SSI said it will come out with an open offer for an additional 20% stake as per the Securities and Exchange Board of India norm, taking its total acquisition to over 47% of the equity share capital of Aptech Training (assuming full subscription and acceptance to the open offer). Finally, the education and training business of SSI will be integrated with Aptech Training.

SSI said the timing and details of the above sequence of events is subject to necessary approval from the boards of the two companies and regulatory authorities.

No major changes are planned at the customer-facing level as a result of the proposed merger

SSI said that 'Aptech' will continue to be the brand with significant focus on long-term career courses and that ‘Asset' will be the brand for extremely certified courses. Also, ‘Arena' will be the brand for multimedia training. 'SSI' will be the brand with significant focus on short-term courses in emerging technologies.

For the third quarter ended 31 December 2002, ATL registered a net profit of Rs 1.76 crore on a 41% drop in net sales to Rs 36.86 crore.