The board of directors at Finnsh pipe maker Uponor (Vantaa; www.uponorgroup.com) says it has rejected a purchase offer from competitor Aliaxis (Brussels; www.aliaxis.com).

On 26 April 2023, the company announced that officials concluded the EUR 25 per share bid did not correspond to its long-term growth prospects and thus the interests of shareholders. Major shareholder Oras Invest, which has a 25.7% stake in Uponor, rejected the Aliaxis offer on 17 April, the pipe maker said.

Uponor noted that it would evaluate any additional bids from Aliaxis or others to decide if they were in the best interest of shareholders.

The bid was 44.6% higher than the closing price of Uponor on 14 April, the day before the offer was published. As of 24 April, Aliaxis had acquired 10.56% of Uponor stock. However, the Uponor board’s decision to rebuff the offer means that an essential condition for the continuation of takeover plans has not been met. Other conditions included access to at least 60% of Uponor shares, the successful completion of due diligence process, and approval by antitrust authorities.

Uponor said it now wants to focus on its new savings and strategy programme announced with the latest annual figures earlier this year. This plan includes margin improvement.

The first steps in this direction began in the Q1 2023. Although sales dropped to EUR 329 mn, a decline of 5.8% from the year-earlier period, adjusted operating profit only fell 3.6%. As a result, the operating margin improved by three-tenths of a percentage point to 13.8%.

All in all, net profit rose 2.5% to EUR 34.1 mn. For the full year 2023, the company said it expects sales of EUR 1.3 bn – EUR 1.4 bn and an operating margin of at least 10%.