Schneider Electric to buy rest of AVEVA

Schneider Electric announced today that it is going to go ahead with its plan to buy the 40% or so of AVEVA that it doesn’t already own. The company said that it will offer AVEVA shareholders £31 per share, which would value AVEVA at around $10.8 billion. That £31 per share is a 40% premium to AVEVA’s share price on August 23, when this whole thing first surfaced.

Schneider Electric said it is “Committed to [AVEVA’s] business autonomy and technological agnosticity through
appropriate governance and incentive structures” — perhaps signifying that it heard AVEVA customers, who want to ensure that they can use any factory automation and power solutions they wish, whether from Schneider Electric or not. Too, some are concerned that Schneider Electric hadn’t invested in its prior software assets (the ones that became part of AVEVA in the original deal) and want assurance that AVEVA will continue to operate with a software company culture, rather than that of a more typical hardware company.

What happens next? According to the documents presented today, AVEVA’s board of directors endorses this deal and will present it to its shareholders in mid-November. Assuming they approve and sell their shares at this price, Schneider Electric expects to close the deal in calendar Q1 2023.