American investors are poised to snap up three companies listed on the London Stock Exchange for a combined value of more than £5bn, as flagging share prices leave British companies vulnerable to takeovers.
Alphawave, which is one of the few semiconductor companies listed in the UK, received an offer worth 183p a share from the US rival Qualcomm and on Monday the British company’s board recommended the deal to shareholders after months of talks.
The deal values the company, which designs and licenses high-speed connectivity technology that can be applied in datacentres and AI applications, at $2.4bn (£1.8bn).
Its takeover is one of three deals that emerged on Monday, as the UK quantum computing startup Oxford Ionics agreed to a $1.1bn takeover by its US rival IonQ.
Oxford Ionics, which was spun out of the University of Oxford, was founded by the physicists Chris Ballance and Tom Harty in 2019. Both founders will remain at IonQ after the acquisition is completed.
IonQ, which is listed in New York, has a market value of $9.7bn, and its shares have more than quadrupled in value over the past year alone.
Meanwhile, shares in the precision and testing equipment specialist Spectris shot up by as much as 69% on Monday after it told its investors that it had received a takeover proposal from the US private equity company Advent.
The proposal, which the company said followed multiple earlier approaches from Advent, includes £37.35 a share and a proposed interim dividend of 28p a share, valuing it at £3.7bn. The jump in the share price pushed up its value to £3.4bn.
The board of Spectris, which is headquartered in London and operates in 36 countries, said it would be minded to recommend the takeover at that level if Advent makes an official offer. The private equity firm has until 5pm on 7 July to announce an offer or walk away, according to City rules.
The three deals are the latest in a string of high-profile companies in the UK that have been taken over by a bigger US rival or have switched their listing to New York in search for better liquidity and higher valuations.
The problem is particularly acute in the UK’s technology industry. While US markets have been dominated by tech players – including the “Magnificent Seven” group of companies – in recent years, the UK can boast just a handful of large listed companies in the sector.
Last week the online payments company Wise told investors it was planning to move its main share listing to the US. Deliveroo, the food delivery app, agreed to a £2.9bn takeover by its US rival DoorDash in May.
Last year Darktrace, the Cambridge-based cybersecurity and artificial intelligence company, agreed to a $5.3bn takeover by the US private equity business Thoma Bravo.
Companies in other sectors are also increasingly turning away from London. Last year the construction equipment rental company Ashtead announced it would move its primary listing to the US, following companies such as the gambling group Flutter Entertainment and the building materials provider CRH.
Earlier this month the drugmaker Indivior said it planned to cancel the secondary listing it had retained in London after switching its main stock listing to the US last year, and the metal investment company Cobalt Holdings scrapped its move to list in London, which was expected to have raised about $230m.
Alphawave, which listed in 2021 alongside a cohort of other British tech companies, started trading at 410p a share but it has mostly traded well below this level since its IPO. Shares rose about 20% on Monday to 177p. It has offices in London, Leeds and Toronto.
The chief executive of Alphawave, Tony Pialis, said the takeover represented an opportunity to “expand our product offerings, reach a broader customer base, and enhance our technological capabilities”.
Qualcomm initially told investors that it was considering making an offer in April. Since then the companies have remained in talks.
Cristiano Amon, the chief executive of San Diego-based Qualcomm, said Alphawave had developed “leading high-speed wired connectivity and compute technologies” that were complementary to his company’s power-efficient central processing unit and neural processing unit cores.
“The combined teams share the goal of building advanced technology solutions and enabling next-level connected computing performance across a wide array of high growth areas, including datacentre infrastructure,” he said.
