Somebody Wants to Buy Amer Sports

Back on September 11, due to some speculation in the media, Amer Sports confirmed that it had “…received a non-binding preliminary indication of interest…from a consortium comprising ANTA Sports Products Limited and the Asian private equity firm FountainVest Partners…” to buy all of Amer Sports’ shares at a cash price of forty Euros per share.

Here’s a link to the Amer Sports web site.  The brands the company owns include, among others, Salomon, Arc’teryx, Armada and Atomic.

ANTA describes itself as follows:

“Established in 1994 and listed on the Main Board of Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007, ANTA Sports Products Limited (stock code: 2020.HK) is the leading sportswear companies in China. Up to Nov. 2016,ANTA’s market value was summed up to USD 7.39 Billion.”

“For many years, we have been principally engaged in the design, development, manufacturing and marketing of ANTA sportswear series to provide professional sporting goods to the mass market.”

“In recent years, we have started moving full steam ahead with the strategy of “Single-focus, Multi-brand, and Omni-channel” to deepen our footprint in the sportswear market.”

The ANTA web site can be found here.   They are a public Chinese company with reported 2017 revenue of 16.7 billion renminbi (about US$ 2.4 billion at the current exchange rate).

ANTA’s purchasing partner FountainVest “…FountainVest is a leading private equity firm investing in companies that benefit from China’s growth, now managing total assets over US$4.5 billion…Our investment strategy has consistently focused on businesses that benefit from the secular growing needs and rising aspirations of the expanding Chinese middle class. While we are a generalist fund that invests across sectors, we have strong experience in areas of healthcare, consumer retail, media & entertainment and lifestyle. Our deal types are both control and growth capital oriented, with us having a high operational focus and a dedicated portfolio management team.”

And here is their web site if you want more information.

On October 11 Amer Sports, by press release, confirmed that there have been discussions between Amer Sports and the potential buyer “…to ascertain whether there is a basis to commence a more formal process to facilitate a possible recommended transaction.”  You can find the press releases here if you’re interested.

We are a long way from a deal, but they’re talking.  As of the end of June, Amer Sports had 116,517,285 shares outstanding.  The stock price closed at 33.89 Euros on October 12.  A purchase price of 40 Euros would represent a premium of 18% and an enterprises value of 4.66 billion Euros.    The stock price has risen from around 29 Euros since the September 11 announcement, with most of the increase coming at the time of the announcement.  It will get closer to 40 Euros if the market comes to believes a deal is more likely to happen.

A quick look at ANTA’s balance sheet leads me to believe they don’t have the financial capacity to pull off the deal alone, hence the involvement of FountainVest.

I don’t have any staggering insights on this transaction, but I hadn’t seen it mentioned and thought you’d be interested in knowing about it.  We are in an industry where it’s good to be big.