Wesco completes acquisition of Anixter International
Wesco International Inc. closed on its acquisition of Anixter International on Monday, making the combined company the largest distributor of electrical products in North America, according to Wesco’s market analysis.
The Station Square-based company, which distributes industrial, construction and utility equipment, pursued Illinois-based Anixter, whose specialty is in data communications, security, wire and cable products, to consolidate a fragmented market.
The deal has been in the works since last year and getting to this point required Wesco to fight off a private equity firm that wanted to buy Anixter and, it was then revealed, had also pursued Wesco.
Wesco raised its bid for the Illinois distributor several times until it was declared the winner. The final deal is valued at $4.5 billion.
The combined company is expected to have 18,600 employees and would have had $17 billion in revenue last year.
Wesco’s stock has seen significant growth since the pandemic shutdown in mid-March. It has outpaced the recovery of the S&P 500 index by a factor of 5, with share prices rising from $15.77 on March 18 to $38.26 on Monday. That’s a gain of 143%, compared with the 29% increase in the S&P index.
Still, Wesco’s stock price remains more than $20 below what it was when the company first revealed in late December it was in a bidding war for Anixter. That announcement kicked off a stock slide that preceded but was exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis.