CRH partners with Barro Group to acquire Adbri

Building materials businesses CRH and Barro Group have partnered together to potentially acquire Australian cement manufacturing company Adbri.

CRH revealed on Monday that the proposed partners had submitted a non-binding offer to acquire Adbri for a cash price of AUD $3.20 (£1.70) per share, giving the company an equity valuation of AUD $2.1bn (£1.11bn).

Under the proposal, CRH will partner with Barro, an approximately 43% shareholder in Adbri. CRH currently has a 4.6% stake in the company via a cash-settled derivative and would acquire the remaining approximately 57% of Adbri's shares not owned by Barro with the intention to delist it from the Australian Stock Exchange.

Adbri recently announced that its 2023 underlying earnings were expected to be in a range of AUD $310.0m-315.0m (£164.0m-167.0m) and the offer represents a multiple of approximately 9.0x enterprise value to expected 2023 underlying EBITDA.

As of 0915 GMT, CRH shares were down 0.75% at 5,264.0p.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com