Spirent Communications shares skyrocketed on Tuesday after the FTSE 250 firm agreed to be bought by US-based communications equipment firm Viavi Solutions.
The takeover will be worth £1billion for the UK telecom testing business with Spirent shareholders receiving 175p per share, reflecting a 61.4 per cent premium to the firm’s closing share price on Monday.
Crawley-based Spirent shareholders will also receive a special dividend of 2.5p per share ‘in lieu of any final dividend’ for 2023.
The deal will see the telecoms testing business receive £1.01billion, with Spirent shareholders receiving 175 pence per share
Spirent Communications shares were up 58.49 per cent to 171.80p in Monday morning trading.
The deal is expected to help Viavi Solutions boost its expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning, security, cloud-native architecture and automation.
Private equity firm Silver Lake will also make a long-term investment of $400million in Viavi Solutions as part of the deal.
Eric Updyke, chief executive officer of Spirent, said: ‘Combining with the Viavi Group brings together a highly complementary product offering which can be marketed globally.
‘It will enable Spirent to build on the strategic progress we have made to date, with a partner that has the scale and resources to capitalise on the long-term growth opportunities ahead.
‘The combination of the Viavi Group and the Spirent Group creates a stronger business that will be better able to compete in what remains a challenging market environment and we are confident in the opportunities this will bring for many of our stakeholders.’
Oleg Khaykin, president and CEO of Viavi, added: ‘Combining our leading communications test and measurement and optical technologies and Spirent’s high-performance testing and assurance solutions is expected to deliver enhanced product solutions and applications, accelerate growth in new markets and strengthen innovation through expanded engineering and design capabilities.’
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