Vista Outdoor said it received an all-cash $2bn takeover offer for its ammunition business, which owns the Remington brand, from an unnamed private investment firm in the US, raising the prospect of a multiway battle for the unit.
Vista said on Monday it had fielded an indication of interest for its Kinetic business from the “alternative party” on June 7, and separately said it had rejected an improved proposal last week from investment group MNC Capital Partners to acquire the entire company for more than $3bn.
Shares in Vista, which has a market value of $2.1bn, traded up marginally in early Monday trading at $35.99. MNC’s latest offer for the group was pitched at $39.50 per share.
Both Monday’s offer and the MNC bid come as Vista is in talks to sell the ammunition business Kinetic to Czechoslovak Group (CSG), a privately owned Czech defence group. CSG announced a recommended $1.9bn bid for Kinetic last October, and Vista plans to separately list its outdoor products business, which includes bicycle helmet brand Giro and CamelBak water bottles, as a standalone company.
Vista said the company directors continued to recommend the CSG deal, but also did not state whether it would accept the proposal from the “alternative party”. The US company, however, said it would adjourn the shareholder meeting scheduled for this Friday, June 14, at which investors had been due to vote on the CSG offer. Another meeting has now been set for July 2.
The postponement, said Vista, would allow it to “engage with the alternative party”. The board, it added, was “committed to maximising value for stockholders”.
CSG declined to comment on the third bidder.
The Czech group’s offer had sparked warnings from Republican politicians about putting a leading US ammunition supplier under foreign ownership and it remains subject to a review by the US Committee on Foreign Investment.
But CSG’s owner and chair Michal Strnad rejected the political criticism, noting that the Czech company had already got congressional clearance to buy two ammunitions factories in the US as part of a separate 2022 acquisition, while his company also has Nato approval as a major weapons supplier, including to Ukraine in its war against Russia.