Weakness in the pound will only serve to heighten the likelihood of foreign companies buying UK businesses.

We saw this happen when the pound slumped after the EU referendum on Brexit in 2016, including takeovers for chip giant Arm and broadcasting group Sky.

UK stocks have been cheap on a relative basis to many other geographies since then, and now they’ve got even cheaper due to political, financial and market chaos.

RENISHAW SALE REVIVAL?

Potential takeover candidates include precision engineer Renishaw (RSW). It ticks all the right boxes for a takeover – a specialist in a niche area, an owner lots of intellectual property and it has two large shareholders who might be persuaded to accept a deal at the right price.

The business was put up for sale on 2 March 2021 after chairman David McMurtry and deputy chairman John Deer – both in their 80s – said they wanted to dispose of their combined 53% stake in the business. Prior to this announcement the shares traded around £57 and then hit £65 a month later, having risen as the market speculated how much it could be worth in a takeover offer.

If we use £65 as the potential bid price, it would have equalled $90 on the day that share price peak was achieved (23 April 2021). At current exchange rates (3 October 2022), a US bidder would only have to pay approximately $73 for an asset worth £65. That’s a reduction of 19% in 18 months.

The next thing to realise is that a mixture of Renishaw ending its formal sales process in July 2021 and concerns about a slowdown in the global economy served to pulled down the engineer’s share price to £34.66 – nearly half the peak reached last year.

If we said that a US buyer offered a very generous 50% bid premium, that implies a takeout price in the region of £52 a share or $58 in US dollars.

McMurtry and Deer might argue that still significantly undervalues the business on a long-term basis, but the maths illustrate how the slump in the pound and UK stocks works to the advantage of overseas buyers, particularly in the US.

MORE POTENTIAL TARGETS

So, who else might be an obvious takeover target among UK-listed stocks? In addition to companies with niche skills and intellectual property, other attributes that make for natural targets include a strong market position in a certain geography. Quite a few takeovers by foreign players of London-listed companies have been to expand geographically or to bolster a position in a certain market.

The telecoms space is attracting interest from European investors, including two French billionaires taking stakes in BT (BT.A) and Vodafone (VOD).

In the gaming space, Entain (ENT) and Playtech (PTEC) have both been subject to bid interest in the past. For example, MGM Resources (MGM:NYSE) offered $11.06 billion or 0.6 shares per Entain share in January 2021 for the UK business, based on the closing price on 31 December 2020. That valued Entain at £13.83 per share or $18.90 based on the exchange rate at the time of the offer.

Entain currently trades at £10.72 per share and reports suggest MGM is still interested in buying the British business because that would enable it to own their BetMGM joint venture outright.

If MGM came back with a new offer pitched at 50% above the market price – the type of bid premium that should excite investors – then it would have to pay £16.08 per share. At today’s exchange rate that equals $18.02 per share, so approximately 5% less than it offered nearly two years ago despite representing a substantially bigger bid premium than the 20% it made last time.

Naturally this is pure speculation and a hypothetical example, but it is another illustration of how the latest currency movements would work in the favour of someone funding a UK takeover in dollars.

THESE FOUR ALSO LOOK LIKE TAKEOVER TARGETS

Looking at the FTSE 350, there are quite a few other stocks which stand out as being potential takeover targets, either because they are experts in a particular field, they would provide the buyer with greater scale, or their shares are cheap because of short-term issues.

We must stress these names are on our list because of the above qualities, not because of chatter about a takeover in the market. However, the fact they seem obvious targets to us would also suggest that trade or private equity buyers are looking closely at them, particularly those based overseas who would benefit from the weak pound should a bid be made.

Darktrace (DARK): Companies around the world have no choice but to take extra precautions to protect their networks and systems given increasing threats from hackers. That spells long-term growth opportunities, and a private equity company would almost certainly want a slice of this pie.

Darktrace is one of the key players in the cybersecurity industry and uses artificial intelligence to spot hacks and data leaks. Private equity group Thoma Bravo held talks with Darktrace earlier this year about a possible offer. While they couldn’t reach an agreement, one suspects that other players might be watching the cybersecurity group closely with a view to making an offer.

Dechra Pharmaceuticals (DPH): The veterinary products group has bought a lot of companies over the years, but will it become prey now its shares have tanked, and the pound is weak?

Dechra has a presence in multiple countries including the US which is the world’s largest animal health market. A US rival or a private equity group might view Dechra as an opportunistic takeover target given its share price has more than halved this year, putting the stock back at levels last seen at the start of the Covid pandemic.

Over the past seven or eight years, investors have been happy to pay at least 25 times earnings to own the shares. The stock is now trading on 22 times forward earnings yet net profit for the current financial year is expected to be four times larger than the year to June 2020.

IWG (IWG): In August, Regus-owner IWG said it had benefited from the rise in hybrid working as more people split their working time between home and the office. For the first half of 2022, IWG said costs had gone up much less than revenue and that it was ‘cautiously optimistic’ on the outlook for the full year.

However, the market has not shared the company’s enthusiasm, with the stock continuing to fall amid fears that a recession would reduce demand for temporary workspaces. Year-to-date the shares have fallen by 59%.

Chief executive Mark Dixon clearly thinks the shares are a steal as he’s just bought £1.2 million worth of stock. That’s the first time he has acquired more shares on the market since investing £91.3 million of his own money as part of IWG’s fundraise during the height of the pandemic in June 2020.

Private equity sniffed round the business in 2018 and then again last year – now the shares are lot lower and weakness in the pound would give a foreign bidder an extra advantage.

Moneysupermarket (MONY): The valuation is depressed because consumers cannot shop around for energy deals due to the surge in prices, thereby hurting one of its key revenue streams. However, recession tends to drive people to look for better deals on cards and loans, which should benefit the comparison site’s money arm.

With an average 42.7% return on capital employed since 2016, according to SharePad, and trading on a mere 12 times forward earnings, we find it hard to believe there aren’t companies running the numbers on Moneysupermarket at its current share price.

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