Super-quick: Spectris calls off Oxford Instruments deal
News came this morning that the acquisition of Oxford Instruments by Spectris is off the table. Spectris’ statement says:
Whilst … Spectris continues to believe there is a compelling strategic and financial rationale for a combination of Spectris and Oxford Instruments … the advent of war in Ukraine, with its deplorable events, has created significant uncertainty in global economic conditions. Since there is no certainty as to when the situation will be resolved, and market conditions will improve, the Board has concluded that the proposed combination is no longer in shareholders’ best interests at the current time. Therefore, discussions regarding the possible offer by Spectris for the entire issued and to be issued share capital of Oxford Instruments have been terminated.
It’s interesting that a war causes a deal to fall through. But market uncertainties are certainly very real right now.
And, following on from Friday’s post, FWIW, a Reuters article said that “Spectris has no operations in Russia, Oxford Instruments ceased its trading in the territories of the Russian Federation and Belarus on Friday”.
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Russia-Ukraine war causes energy and materials prices to rise, so corporations will have to accelerate digitalisation and automation to get productivity gains to offset higher costs.
So the CAPEX boom that was already in place, will now get stronger.
Arm conflict is another supply chain shock and deglobalisation in addition to pandemic, incentivising companies to restructure supply chains after decades of inertia and under-investing. Corporations now building out more manufacturing capacity at home.
All this means industrial automation stocks, having sold off since January look set to take-off in H2 2022. Q1 & Q2 earnings will be very strong.
Good news is Spectris will do well without a big deal.
Thanks for your perspective, Hendy!