NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Thermo Fisher Scientific said after the close of the market on Tuesday that it has received notice that private investment firm TRC Capital has made an unsolicited mini-tender offer to purchase up to 1 million shares of the company's stock at $181.75 per share in cash.
Thermo Fisher is recommending its shareholders to reject the offer. The TRC offer price is about 4.43 percent lower than the $190.17 closing price of Thermo Fisher's shares on Nov. 17, the last closing price before the offer was made. The offer is for about .249 percent of Thermo's outstanding shares of common stock as of the offer date, it added.
Shares of Thermo Fisher closed on Tuesday up about 1 percent on the New York Stock Exchange at $192.93. The company had more than 400 million shares outstanding.
Mini-tender offers seek to acquire less than 5 percent of a firm's outstanding shares, avoiding some investor protections given to larger tender offers, Thermo Fisher said, adding that TRC has made "many similar unsolicited mini-tender offers" for other publicly traded companies.
According to Thermo Fisher, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has warned investors that some bidders make tenders at below-market prices "'hoping that they will catch investors off guard if the investor do not compare the offer price to the current market price."