Cooper Industries, Inc. – Case Solution

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Cooper Industries, Inc. Case Answers

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Executive Summary – Cooper Industries, Inc.

Cooper Industries, Inc. started out in 1919 and, by the middle of the twentieth century, had become the market leader in the manufacturing industry of heavy equipment and engines. However, the industry was highly cyclical, and therefore, the company wanted to diversify its business risks and explore the idea of growing through acquisitions.

Cooper Industries has been trying to acquire the Nicholson File company for the past three years. The expansion policy of Cooper focuses on acquiring the industry leaders in their respective markets who would strategically be in line with the current operations and aspirations of Cooper Industries.

However, there are other companies (H.K. Porter and VLN Corporation) that are interested in the acquisition of Nicholson. The cash offer from H.K. Porter wasn’t in line with Nicholson management’s endeavors, and the offer from VLN did please the management and the Nicholson family but couldn’t get enough support from major stockholders.

The difference in the valuation of Nicholson in the situations that the company continues to operate as a stand-alone firm. And that the company acquired by Cooper revealed that high synergies would be generated from the merger, attributing to higher sales and cost-cutting by better management of business activities in the firm.

For the acquisition to seem attractive to the shareholders of both firms, the offered share price should be between the pre-merger and post-merger share price of Nicholson, which is $25 and $64, respectively.

The sensitivity analysis points out that the synergies generated by the merger ($38 per share) would not be achieved by Nicholson alone at any point in time since the cost of capital to attain is practically impossible. Therefore, a merger makes economic sense and a wise decision to pursue.

This would then raise the basic question of financing, and we believe that using just stock or cash as a form of method is a simplistic approach since the transaction with just share issues would not help with the market performance of the stock, which has been declining over the past few months.

However, most of the major shareholders of Nicholson (the family and management, Porter) want a tax-free swap of shares so as to avoid the immediate tax liability they would have in case of cash transactions.

Cooper also cannot finance all of it by raising cash through new debt issues since it would not be what the management and other key shareholders want; more so that raising such high levels of debt will greatly affect their market leverage ratio, which might also lead to a downgrading of their credit rating. A solution is to use a combination of stocks and any convertible security or other financial instruments.

The announcement of a simple stock swap with an exchange ratio of 2:1 by Cooper and its effect on the stock price reflects the probability of how the market would perceive the transaction going forward.

There is a 63% probability of the acquisition being completed, and there are expected synergies of $34 million in the case Cooper acquires Nicholson completely or $33 million if they just move for a majority stake in the firm.

These expected synergies will be shared in the ratio of the shareholding in the merged company (NewCo), and Cooper’s share in both scenarios would be $20 million.

Moreover, the minimum synergies for the transaction to not destroy value for Cooper’s shareholders would be $8.2 million if they move for complete ownership and $7.8 million in the case they only seek a simple majority.

The findings lead us to the conclusion that Cooper should move to seek ownership and the majority stake in Nicholson as Nicholson’s stock is undervalued, and there is the serious capability to raise their revenues to industry averages and reduce costs at the same time, turning this into an extremely profitable business.

Cooper will also reach new customers and international markets by using Nicholson’s sales and distribution network. Mr. Cizik and the management of Cooper should move for control of Nicholson.

Cooper Industries was the leading manufacturer of engines and heavy equipment in the mid-1950s, but several unsuccessful acquisitions between 1959 and 1966 left the firm sensitive to developments in financial conditions.

A new acquisition strategy was developed in 1966. The strategy was to focus on targets with stable business leaders in respective markets and restrict the diversification of the firm to a few distinctive sectors. In the quest to acquire a hand tool business company, Nicholson, an offer was sent out to the target firm in 1969.

Nicholson File company was run by the Nicholson family. Even though the company was the biggest hand tools manufacturer, a low annual growth rate, poor sales, depreciating stock investors’ interest, and a very conservative style of management were some of the many reasons the company was not performing well over the years.

On the other side of the spectrum, Nicholson was one of the known business leaders with less risk. Nicholson’s business was in line with the business aspirations of Cooper Industries.

Nicholson would be an…