Welcome to Broyhill's Equity Highlights, where we share a few quick takes on recent news across the portfolio every month.
We aim to make these highlights easy to read and easy to repeat. Feel free to share our work!
Avantor Announces New CEO Hire. Avantor has appointed Emmanuel Ligner as its new CEO. Ligner has decades of industry experience as the CEO of GE Life Sciences and later leading Cytvia within Danaher. The hiring resolves one important overhang for the stock, a welcome reprieve amidst challenging conditions in the broader healthcare sector.
Reckitt Completes Essential Home Sale. Reckitt Benckiser is divesting its Essential Home business, comprising cleaning products like Woolite and Resolve, to private equity group Advent International. The transaction will have a total enterprise value of $4.8 billion, and Reckitt will retain 30% of the equity and be entitled to additional payments based on performance targets. Proceeds were in line with our expectations, although we were disappointed by its election to pay proceeds out as a special dividend instead of repurchasing what we view as its underpriced shares.
Uber Partners with Waymo for Autonomous Rideshare in Atlanta. Uber launched its driverless ride-hailing service in Atlanta alongside Waymo, a division of Alphabet. Atlanta marks the second city where the two companies have teamed up to offer the service and one of many for Waymo. We believe such partnerships will serve as a roadmap for the industry, with Uber serving as the network partner of choice as its large base of active users allows high levels of utilization for autonomous vehicle providers.
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