Investopedia: SRA Today, CACI Tomorrow?

Acquisition announcements on Fridays are a bit rare, but that was about the only really surprising part of the announcement that IT services provider SRA International (NYSE:SRX) was taking a bid to sell itself. What may be more interesting for investors, though, is the speculation as to whether SRA will get a competing bid and/or whether other leading IT service companies may see a revaluation of their shares.

SRA - A Solid Bid at Last
There have been rumors for a little while that SRA was attracting buyout interest. There was a rumor back in January that Britain's Serco had offered $2 billion, and the company has basically been in play ever since. Those rumors came to some fruition with the announcement Friday that the company had accepted a bid from Providence Equity Partners for $31.25 a share in cash, or a total deal value of $1.9 billion.

At $31.25 a share, Providence is giving shareholders a 10% premium to Thursday's closing price and more than a 50% premium to the price before the deal speculation really got going. Like the eBay (Nasdaq:EBAY) deal for GSI Commerce (Nasdaq:GSIC), this offer is including a 30-day go-shop period; likely in the hopes of de-fanging the ambulance-chasing class action suits that seem to be popping up these days whenever a deal is announced. (For more, see Is eBay Looking At GSI Commerce As Another PayPal?)

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An Intelligent Deal For Raytheon

The unpredictable and highly political nature of defense and intelligence spending make it difficult for small, publicly traded defense companies to really thrive. It is not all that surprising, then, that there has been a wave of M&A in the space - not only due to the increasing significance of electronic warfare and the need for bigger companies to add technology, but also the increasing uncertainty of spending in the face of higher deficits and debts.

With all that in mind, then, it is not surprising to see Monday's announcement that Raytheon (NYSE:RTN) reached a deal to acquire Applied Signal (Nasdaq:APSG). (For background reading, check out the Mergers & Acquisitions Tutorial.)

The Scoop on the Deal 
What is a surprise is that Applied Signal's management essentially put itself on the block back in October of this year. This is surprising because the company's management had not been very warm to the idea of a sale for many years. With that change in attitude though, things moved quickly.

Raytheon, one of the largest defense companies in the world, announced that it would acquire Applied Signal for $490 million in an all-cash deal that values Applied Signal at $38 per share. That is not only a 9% premium to the stock's closing price on Friday, but also a 90% premium to where the stock traded before management publicly discussed the possibility of a sale.

All in all, this is an eminently fair deal for Applied Signal shareholders. Relative to deals like Boeing (NYSE:BA), which bought Argon ST; Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC), which bought Essex; and FLIR (Nasdaq:FLR), which acquired iCX Tech; if APSG goes out at more than 15 times its trailing EBITDA, it's a fair price.

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