The competitive juices must be flowing. Last week, it was all about ThermoFisher offering to purchase Millipore for approximately $5.6 B ($4.4 B cash) including assumption of debt ($1.2 B). Millipore was said to be weighing the offer and had hired Goldman Sachs to help them do so.
Late yesterday, Business Week reported Merck KGaA upped the offer to approximately $6 B in cash plus acquisition of the $1.2 B in debt. They offered Millipore $107 per share as compared to the Friday closing price of $94 and change, a 13% increase over the previous Thermo offer. Merck CEO Karl Ludwig Kley called it a fair price and said the acquisition will continue the transformation of Merck as it too tries to cover the entire work flow for a biotech production customer.
The offer represents 13.4x EBITDA and is ranked near midpoint of multiples of 22 such deals in the industry in last 5 years (how about last two with poorer economy?). Looks like Millipore shareholders will prosper, it remains to be seen if Merck's will be as fortunate. Anybody want to bid $8 B while the testosterone is in the air?
Posted by Bruce Lehr March 1, 2010
In reading the Reuter's article on this transaction, they reported the multiple on EBITDA as 15.1x. I don't know whether this or the figure in my post is correct as I didn't do the math.
Posted by: Bruce Lehr | 03/01/2010 at 11:43 AM