Volkswagen has agreed to buy a 75.1% stake in WirelessCar, a provider of connected vehicle services, from Volvo for 1.1 billion Swedish kronor (around €110 million). The deal will net VW a business with expected revenues of 500 million kronor and more than 3 million active connected cars.
Aramco completes €1.5B Arlanxeo takeover
Saudi Aramco has officially bought the 50% of Dutch specialty chemicals joint venture Arlanxeo it did not own from Germany’s Lanxess for around €1.5 billion. The acquired business focuses on synthetic rubber and elastomer products for tire and auto-parts manufacturers. Aramco and Lanxess originally agreed to the deal in August.
Ophir confirms approach from Medco
Indonesian oil and gas business Medco Energi is in talks with Ophir Energy about a possible acquisition bid, the London-based exploration specialist has confirmed. Takeover Code rules require Medco to announce its intention to make a bid by close of business on January 28. Ophir generated revenues of $102 million in the first half of 2018, up from $88.3 million in the previous year.
Aareal seals German bank takeover
Aareal Bank has completed its acquisition of Düsseldorfer Hypothekenbank for around €162 million. The transaction will lead to a positive one-off effect, which will boost Aareal’s 2018 profit by around €52 million. The Düsseldorf-based mortgage lender no longer originates new property finance business, and has been undergoing an orderly wind-down process since 2015.
Slack Makes Third Acquisition In 3 Months
In its latest acquisition, messaging powerhouse Slack has picked up Astro.
The move is part of Slack’s mission to bundle up workplace communication into one place. Astro, founded out of Palo Alto in 2015, is the maker of an AI-powered app that allows email and calendar information to be viewed directly from Slack’s messaging interface, essentially providing a way for workers to check all their messages in the same place without moving between apps. With the acquisition, Astro’s tech will be rolled into Slack’s platform.
Slack has acquired five companies—including Astro—since it was founded in 2009, per the PitchBook Platform. Notably, three of those acquisitions have occurred since the beginning of the summer.
In July, Slack picked up Missions, an app developed by Robots & Pencils that allows users of Slack to automate routine tasks. Later that same month, the San Francisco-based company agreed to acquire Hipchat and Stride, two of Atlassian’s messaging products. As part of that deal, Slack is integrating the collaboration apps into its own product, much like it’s doing with Astro.
Pre-2018, Slack had made just two acquisitions in nine years. Its first ever was Spaces, a collaboration startup it picked up in 2014. The following year, Slack bought Screenhero, a startup that developed a platform for users to access one another’s screens. The deal for Astro is reportedly the biggest of Slack’s acquisitions, and most of the company’s 28 employees are said to be joining Slack upon the deal’s closing.
The deal comes a month after Slack announced a major new fundraise. The company brought in $427 million at a valuation of more than $7.1 billion in late August, further solidifying its ranking as one of the most valuable VC-backed companies in the US.
From Astro’s perspective, the acquisition represents an exit for its investors, which include Redpoint Ventures and Aspect Ventures. The company raised more than $8 million in a Series A funding last year.
VW CEO Says It Is Open To Alliance Or Merger Of Ducati
Motorbike brand Ducati could be merged with a rival or enter an alliance given a lack of synergy potential with the passenger car businesses at VW, Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) Chief Executive Herbert Diess told German daily Handelsblatt.
Volkswagen has struggled to find a long-term solution for the motorbike brand amid internal power struggles, with a 1.5 billion euro ($1.8 billion) auction stalled last year amid resistance from German trade unions.
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“I can imagine a combination or a partnership with other brands. Ducati as a motorbike icon business within the Volkswagen Group is not sufficient,” Diess, who took the helm as Volkswagen chief executive in April, told the paper.
PepsiCo Buys Sodastream For $3.2Billion
PepsiCo has announced it is buying Sodastream for $3.2bn (£2.5bn).
Israel-based Sodastream makes a machine and refillable cylinders allowing users to make their own carbonated drinks.
The deal gives Pepsi a new way of reaching customers in their homes at a time when its signature sugary drinks are becoming less popular.
It is also the company’s first big acquisition since chief executive Indra Nooyi disclosed she would step down in October after 12 years at the helm.
PepsiCo will buy all outstanding shares of Sodastream for $144 each – almost 11% higher than its closing price in New York on Friday.
The stock has soared 85% this year after rising by 78% in 2017.
The takeover has already been approved by the boards of both firms.
Coinbase Continues It’s Impressive Acquisition Streak
Coinbase has acquired digital identity startup Distributed Systems, as the cryptocurrency trading platform takes another step deeper into digital identity protection. The acqui-hire of the San Francisco-based company (fka Pavlov) will help Coinbase develop a decentralized identity login protocol meant to work a bit like accessing a third-party website using one’s Facebook account.
The deal is the latest in an impressive acquisition streak this year for Coinbase. In March, cryptocurrency’s first unicorn hired Emilie Choi as VP of corporate and business development, with a promise of more M&A activity in the future. The move followed Choi’s eight-year tenure as VP and head of corporate development at LinkedIn—a period that coincided with its $26.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft in 2016.
For fans of all things M&A, Choi has hardly disappointed in her new role, and Coinbase has worked to deliver on its pledge to boost its dealmaking. The company has completed eight acquisitions since its founding in 2012, per the PitchBook Platform, but just two came before 2018. Last quarter alone, Coinbase put a bow on five of those deals, as it works to take more significant steps toward diversifying its platform beyond the buying and selling of bitcoin, as the cryptocurrency’s value has plunged from the dizzying heights achieved late last year.
Civil Engineering – Project Build
We are working with a number of companies who operate within the Civil Engineering and Construction sector who are looking to make a number of acquisitions before end of November 2018 .
To ensure impartiality in all acquisitions that the companies wish to pursue, the boards of each company have adopted a best practice format to score and project manage their acquisitions.
This approach ensures that all potential target companies are benchmarked against the acquisition strategy of each acquiring company, and a collective decision by the entire board is taken on which acquisitions to pursue.
All parties are protected by Non-Disclosure Agreements and a full project brief is signed off by all parties who enter discussions.
The senior Board for each company have agreed to meet every 60 days to formulate offers and ‘sign off’ on all target companies that match their acquisition briefs.
If You Feel Your Business Would Be of Value to Our Clients, Please Contact James Bradlay at: James@achieve-corporation.com
$3.9B Move In The Public Markets
At the start of this month, KKR officially converted from a partnership to a corporation. It was the culmination of a gradual, decades-long shift that’s seen the firm become more and more interested in the public markets, in contrast to its traditionally private-markets-focused PE peers.
KKR’s penchant for exiting investments via IPO is one indication of this philosophy. And its half-decade as a backer of Gardner Denver—a period that began five years ago today, on July 30, 2013—is a prime example.
In this particular saga, the firm’s connection with the stock market began with a search for targets. Gardner Denver, an industrial manufacturer focused on flow-control products for an array of industries, had been publicly traded on the NYSE for 70 years when KKR purchased all its outstanding shares in a take-private buyout valued at $3.9 billion, including the assumption of debt. KKR brought in new management as part of the deal, hiring industry veteran Timothy Sullivan as CEO and president, and appointing Michael Larsen as CFO.
The next four years brought conflicting financial signals for Gardner Denver, with a decline in energy prices wreaking havoc across the industry. The company managed to grow its EBITDA margins steadily under KKR ownership, but revenue declined by some 27% between 2014 and 2016. And something had soon become clear: The debt that KKR had piled onto the company’s existing load in order to execute its buyout was proving problematic. A return to the public markets beckoned.
The company still listed nearly $2.8 billion in total obligations as of March 31, 2017, per an SEC filing. Among a list of other risks, Gardner Denver claimed that it “may not be able to generate sufficient cash to service our indebtedness.”
That may have played a role in the lukewarm response to the company’s roadshow. After initially seeking a price of between $23 and $26 per share for its offering of 41.3 million shares, Gardner Denver ultimately priced its listing at $20 per share for its May 2017 IPO, raising $826 million at an estimated $3.8 billion valuation. The difference between an original midpoint estimate of $24.50 per share and the ultimate $20 per share pricing amounted to some $186 million—a healthy discount from what the company’s investors had hoped for.
In reality, we should maybe use the singular “investor”: KKR owned a 98.6% pre-IPO stake in Gardner Denver and retained a 75% holding upon the offering’s completion.
The company’s stock price hovered in the low $20s for the next several months. By last autumn, however, it began to tick up—first past $25 per share, then past $30. For KKR, that meant it was time to pull out some profits.
Last November 13, the firm announced plans to offer 22 million shares of Gardner Denver; the company closed trading that day with a market cap of about $5.8 billion. KKR announced a secondary offering of another 26.6 million shares for $31 apiece in May, a sale that was set to generate some $823 million in cash. Combined, those nearly 49 million shares that KKR sold in a six-month span represent about a quarter of Gardner Denver’s outstanding stock.
In terms of the traditional buyout cycle of acquisition to exit, KKR’s deal with Gardner Denver may not have generated the sky-high profits to which the PE industry is accustomed. But by holding onto post-IPO shares and playing the stock market, the firm showed the benefits of its emphasis on both the public and private sides of the economy.