The Spectris board has recommended a £3.8 billion cash takeover by private equity group Advent International.
The offer comprises £37.35 in cash plus a 28p interim dividend. Shareholders will also receive the final dividend for 2024 without any reduction to the cash consideration.
The bid represents a premium of 84.6% to the 2,038p closing price on 6th June 2025, the last trading day before the offer period began. The bid is also an 82.9% premium to the one-month volume-weighted average price of 2,058p.
Spectris shares have traded as low as 1,877p this year.
The deal follows a bidding war involving another private equity group, KKR, which is still circling Spectris and could make a bid.
Spectris have opted to go with the original offer from Advent, which was announced in early June.
Advent’s offer values Spectris at an enterprise value of approximately £4.4 billion, equating to 18.5 times Spectris’ adjusted EBITDA and 21.8 times adjusted EBIT for 2024.
This is a valuation the company would struggle to achieve as a London-listed company, and is yet another example of private equity seeing more value in UK companies than the market is prepared to attribute to them.
Advent highlighted Spectris management’s business repositioning since 2018 as a key driver for their acquisition. Spectris recently said it expected ‘strong progress’ in 2025 despite slow Q1 trading conditions.
Advent has over $91 billion in assets under management with a portfolio of 430 investments across 44 countries.