Kier completes £265m Mouchel takeover
Kier Group, the property, residential, and construction company, has completed its £265m acquisition of the entire issue share capital of infrastructure services firm Mouchel, which has offices in Liverpool and Manchester.
Mouchel is an international infrastructure and business services group, which provides advisory, design, project delivery and managed services to the highways and transportation, local government, property, emergency services, health, education and utilities markets in the United Kingdom, the Middle East and Australia. It is the leading provider of repair and maintenance services to the UK strategic road network.
Kier agreed in April to acquire Mouchel’s total issued share capital for £265m in cash from the Mouchel Sellers to be financed by a £340m fully underwritten rights issue. Under the rights issue, new shares will be issued at 858p per share on the basis of five new shares for every seven existing shares.
Mouchel reported group revenue of £616.6m and underlying operating profit of £27.7m for the year ended 30 September 2014. Revenues for the three months ended 31 December 2014 increased by 38% compared to the same period in the previous year.
The acquisition creates an enlarged group with a combined order book of £9.3bn, made up of Kier’s order book of £6.5bn and Mouchel’s order book of £2.8bn.
Haydn Mursell, chief executive of Kier, said: “The successful acquisition of Mouchel now positions Kier as a sector leader in the growing UK highways maintenance and management market. In particular, the acquisition enables the group to capitalise on £17bn of investment in the strategic road network to be delivered through Highways England over the next five years, whilst also accelerating the delivery of Kier’s Vision 2020 strategy.”
The Kier share price was up 8p to 1,442p this morning.
