Yet another firm looks set to end its London Stock Exchange listing, with specialist equipment business Spectris recommending to shareholders to accept a £3.8bn takeover bid.
A cash offer from a private equity firm, Advent International, is for £37.63 per share.
Spectris’ share price at the close of Friday’s session was around £33.48, sparking an immediate jump of 15 per cent when markets reopened on Monday morning - by far the FTSE All-Share’s biggest riser on the day.
Even so, the price could yet move even higher. While Advent’s bid has been accepted, another American investment firm KKR has signalled an intent to potentially make another offer, while the actual change in share price is even bigger when widening the timeline.
Spectris makes and tests technologies and instruments for use across many industrial sectors. But falling sales and profits meant the share price fell from above £41 in 2021, to around £25 for most of the second half of 2024.
Add in trade tariff uncertainty and shares could be bought below £20 as recently as late May, but the first takeover approaches being made public quickly put a rocket under the price, which has now soared 89 per cent since then.
Andrew Heath, CEO of Spectris, said the offer recognised “our strong growth prospect”.
Should the deal go through it would be another 2025 departure for the LSE to chalk up.
Alphawave is set for a £1.8bn takeover from Qualcomm, Oxford Ionics has agreed to a £0.8bn takeover by US rival IonQ and financial services firm Wise are intent on shifting their listing from UK to US - that latter being a £10bn departure.
They are unlikely to be the last moves made in the sphere either, with valuations continually lower on the LSE than the same firms might expect to see in the US...or if taken private, as AJ Bell’s investment director Russ Mould pointed out.
“The fact we’ve got two bid battles in Spectris and Assura just goes to show how the UK stock market continues to be on sale. If investors don’t recognise the good value opportunities on offer, trade buyers or private equity firms will keep swooping on targets and pick them off one by one,” he said.
