*BREAKING NEWS* World’s Largest Heat Treater Agrees to Sale!
“The board of Bodycote Group (LSE:BOY) has recommended a £1.65 billion acquisition by Veritas Capital, with the US investment firm offering shareholders 940p per share following a competitive process that also drew interest from Apollo and CVC.
Shareholders are being offered 932.8p in cash for each Bodycote share, while retaining the 7.2p interim dividend declared in July, taking the total consideration to 940p per share.
On that basis, the transaction places a roughly £1.65 billion equity valuation on the specialist thermal processing group, with an implied enterprise value of about £1.85 billion.
The 940p figure is 25.3% above Bodycote’s closing price of 750.2p on 4 August, before the formal offer period began, and 37.5% higher than its three-month average price before takeover speculation emerged in May.
The outcome follows several months of approaches for the company.
Apollo’s unsolicited interest became public in May, after which Bodycote received separate proposals from Veritas and CVC. The board initially rejected their approaches as insufficient.
CVC later raised its proposal to 915p per share, including the dividend, while Veritas reached 914p. Veritas then returned on 31 August with the higher 940p offer now recommended by the board.
Bodycote chair Daniel Dayan said the proposal recognised the quality of the business while giving investors the opportunity to realise value immediately in cash.
Veritas, which had about $54 billion of assets under management at the end of June, has extensive exposure to aerospace, defence and highly engineered industrial businesses. It said private ownership would give Bodycote greater flexibility to invest and pursue both organic growth and acquisitions.
The engineer operates roughly 130 facilities across 22 countries, providing heat treatment and specialist thermal processing to customers in aerospace, automotive, energy and industrial markets.
The transaction will proceed through a scheme of arrangement, subject to shareholder, court and regulatory approvals, with the process targeted to become effective in the first quarter of 2027.”