Vista Outdoor's board of directors has rejected a $2.6 billion unsolicited offer from the Czech company Colt CZ to buy the Anoka-based company, sticking with its original plan to sell its ammunitions business to a different Czech company.
Vista Outdoor rejects competing offer, sticking with first merger plan for Anoka company
The unsolicited $2.6 billion offer from Czech firm Colt CZ would have been for the entire company. The first plan sells off the ammunitions business.
November 30, 2023 at 6:13PM
After consulting with financial and legal advisers, the board sent a detailed rejection letter to officials at Colt CZ, it said in a statement on Thursday. The board contends that Colt CZ's offer made last week undervalued Vista and lacked details to justify its bid.
The board concluded that the proposal "would not be more favorable to Vista stockholders from a financial point of view" than a pending offer accepted by the board to sell the ammunitions business to another Czech company, CSG Group.
Colt CZ proposed paying $30 a share for the company. That equated to about $1.7 billion, not including debt. With the debt, outside data provider LSEG valued Colt CZ's deal at $2.6 billion. The Vista board's rejection letter said Colt CZ's offer "does not provide adequate details relating to the debt and equity financing."
Vista's original plan was to split the company into two independent publicly traded firms, one with its outdoor products and the other other with its sporting products, mainly its ammunition brands.
In October, Vista's board changed course, announcing it would to sell its sporting products segment, which includes its ammunition brands Federal, Remington, CCI and Speer, to CSG Group. When announced, the deal was valued at $1.9 billion.
As part of the revised plan, the outdoor products group — 34 brands including Camelbak, Camp Chef and Simms Fishing — would become a standalone public company called Revelyst. The new company would likely be based in Montana.
Under the CSG deal, the U.S. operations of the ammunitions group would continue to be based in Anoka. Federal, which is the foundation of the sporting products group, has been making ammunition at its 175-acre Anoka plant for more than 100 years.
The deal with CSG and the spinoff of Revelyst are expected to close in 2024. Both deals would need to meet customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, including an OK from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States for the CSG deal.
The American restaurant and bar recently filed for bankruptcy. Minneapolis-based Carlson had owned the brand for 40 years before selling it to a private equity firm in 2014.
