Pactera

China M&A: Three Recent Deals

Leave a Comment / June 4, 2013

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In the last month, three large takeovers were announced involving Chinese companies. In two of these, PE buyout firms (CITIC Capital and Blackstone)  are offering to take private Chinese companies (AsiaInfo-Linkage and Pactera) quoted on the US stock exchange. In the third, a Chinese acquirer (Shuanghui International) has offered to purchase all shares of US pork producer Smithfield Foods.

I’ve done a quick comparison of these deals across a range of financial variables — premium offered to current shareholders, p/e ratio, profit growth, last two years’ share price performance. I’ve also offered my own judgment on the risks and the industrial logic of the deal, on a scale of 1-10.

The results: the troubled deals, the ones with the highest risks and deepest uncertainties about future performance, with the most anemic share prices up to the date of the offer, with claims or investigations of accounting fraud, with the least industrial logic, are commanding the higher price.

Ah, the Mysterious Orient.

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Correction: I wrote this article based on the first day’s English-language media coverage of the Smithfield-Shuanghui International takeover. Big mistake. I took at face value the media’s account that this was a merger between China’s largest pork producer and America’s. Turns out the coverage was wrong, and so my conclusion was also. In the software business, it’s called GIGO, “Garbage in, garbage out.” The Smithfield-Shuanghui deal is every bit as precarious an LBO as the other two. The only improvement is that the target company, Smithfield, is a better and more transparent business than AsianInfo-Linkage or Pactera. For the real situation on this Smithfield deal, see this blog post.

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Blackstone Leads Latest Chinese Privatization Bid — New York Times

Leave a Comment / December 14, 2014

NYT

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Download complete text

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MAY 21, 2013, 7:07 AM

Blackstone Leads Latest Chinese Privatization Bid

By NEIL GOUGH

A fund run by the Blackstone Group is leading a $662.3 million bid for a technology outsourcing firm based in China, the latest example of a modest boom among buyout shops backing the privatization of Chinese companies listed in the United States.

A consortium backed by a private equity fund of Blackstone that includes the Chinese company’s management said on Monday that it would offer $7.50 a share to acquire Pactera Technology International, which is based in Beijing and listed on Nasdaq.

The offer, described as preliminary, represents a hefty 43 percent premium to Pactera’s most recent share price before the deal was announced. The news sent the company’s stock up 30.6 percent on Monday, to $6.87 — still more than 8 percent below the offer price, in a sign that some investors remain wary that a deal will be completed.

More…

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Pactera ‘Challenged By Investors Every Day’ — Wall Street Journal

Leave a Comment / March 9, 2014

WSJ

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By Paul Mozur

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In an interview with The Wall Street Journal  on May 10th,  the chief executive of China’s largest software outsourcing company Pactera Inc. PACT -1.04% said investors had been pestering the company “every day” to carry out share buybacks to bolster the company’s share price.

“Our shares are trading very badly, it’s at a multiple that I can’t even imagine,” CEO Tiak Koon Loh said during the interview.

Since that interview, Mr. Loh, along with Blackstone Inc. BX -0.58% and several other Pactera executives, decided to try to cash in on that low price with a bid to take the company private for $7.50 a share or a 42.5% premium to where shares closed Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market NDAQ -0.19%.

Following on the heels of a bid by a CITIC Capital Partners-led consortium to take private another Chinese IT services company AsiaInfo-Linkage Inc. ASIA -0.17%, the Pactera deal has led bankers and commentators to wonder whether the recent trend of private equity firms jumping to take Chinese companies listed in the U.S. private  is looking a little frothy.

“The [Pactera] deal may go down in the annals of most expensive [leveraged buyouts] ever launched. Blackstone is offering current shareholders a price equal to over 200 times 2012 net income,” said Peter Fuhrman, chairman of China First Capital.

Nonetheless, in the interview before the deal, Mr. Loh laid out his reasoning for why Pactera has good growth potential ahead of it. In particular, he said the company stands to benefit over the next decade, not just in the industry of software outsourcing, but also in tech consulting services as China’s technology industry booms.

For example, Pactera partnered with Microsoft Corp. MSFT -1.33% and 21Vianet Group Inc. to help develop Windows and Office cloud services in China, which launched on Wednesday.  Mr. Loh said that the company has a number of other cloud projects it is working on, in particular helping provincial governments build cloud infrastructure.

“China has always grown faster than the global [outsourcing] market,” Mr. Loh said.

But there are reasons to be more bearish on Pactera, especially in the short term. With more than 10% of its revenues coming from Japan, the company is likely to be hit hard this year by the falling Yen, according to Mr. Loh.

“Everything you do is in Japanese Yen, and every contract is signed in Japanese Yen, and it has just dropped 25%,” he said, adding that business has grown despite recent political difficulties between China and Japan.

Another issue is integration. Pactera was formed by the 2012 merger of HiSoft Technology International Ltd. and VanceInfo Technologies Inc. Mr. Loh acknowledged that there had been some “leakage” of productivity as the two companies work to integrate cultures and some employees or teams had left, but he nonetheless said that he expected growth to return.

“But beyond this year and getting back to the norm we should see ourselves growing…. no less than the industry and no less than the industry is at least 16% [revenue growth] year on year,” he said.

More than just saying it, Mr. Loh is betting on it. Now it’s a matter of whether shareholders believe that kind of growth in the coming years could get them more than the $7.5 per share on offer from the deal.

Blackstone did not immediately return calls.

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