Vodafone has come to an agreement with the majority owners of Cobra Automotive Technologies to acquire their stock for €1.49 per share, which values the Italian security and telematics group at €145m.
Industrial group KME and Cobra SM (Serafino…
Vodafone has come to an agreement with the majority owners of Cobra Automotive Technologies to acquire their stock for €1.49 per share, which values the Italian security and telematics group at €145m.
Industrial group KME and Cobra SM (Serafino Memmola), which together own 73.96% of the group, have already accepted the offer, and Vodafone will launch an offer to buy out the remaining shareholders in the coming weeks.
Vodafone will take on Cobra’s €48m debt pile and has offered another €20m to acquire a 20% minority holding in Cobra’s Telematics subsidiary owned by Tracker Connect Proprietary Limited.
Vodafone’s M&A adviser is Mediobanca while Hogan Lovells is serving as legal counsel. The telco described the acquisition of Cobra as being in line with its strategy to expand its machine-to-machine (M2M) offering.
Cobra is headquartered in Varese, Italy and is listed on the Milan stock exchange. It has operations in Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.
The group offers the automotive industry telematics services such as usage-based insurance and vehicle tracking.
The transaction is subject to antitrust approvals and the British telco expects the deal to close in Q3.
It is Vodafone’s third M&A deal this year following its €7.2bn acquisition of Spanish cableco Ono and its US$1.7bn buyout of minority shareholders in its Indian unit.
The deals follow the closing of the sale of its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless to Verizon Communications for US$130bn, which closed in February.
