Hess deal delay hangs over Mike Wirth's legacy
Happy Friday!
This week, Sabrina Valle, Ron Bousso and Marianna Parraga produced a deeply reported piece on Chevron’s stalled $53 billion takeover of Hess and how that has cast a shadow on CEO Mike Wirth’s legacy.
Five years ago, Chevron CEO Michael Wirth won Wall Street acclaim as the No. 2 U.S. oil company briefly achieved a market value larger than Exxon Mobil’s after he refused to get into a bidding war with Occidental Petroleum over a rival.
He was ahead of the game when the pandemic hit oil and gas demand, forcing rivals to make deep cutbacks that Wirth had already tackled at Chevron. Its shares had outperformed rivals for five years until 2022.
Fast forward to 2024 and Wirth's legacy is in danger. Chevron’s falling earnings no longer cover its dividends and buybacks. Project overruns in Kazakhstan and Australia have cost the company billions.
The CEO is also locked in a must-win arbitration battle with Exxon Mobil that has held up his $53 billion purchase of Hess, a deal that would give Chevron a stake in a lucrative Guyana oilfield that Exxon operates.
Exxon's challenge has delayed the deal by almost two years and threatens to kill it entirely by asserting a right of first refusal over a sale of the Guyana properties.
Chevron shares are up 18% since Wirth took over as CEO in 2018, compared to Exxon's 31% gain over the same period.
Wirth's job is not at risk, say Chevron executives and industry sources. The board granted him a retirement-age waiver more than a year ago as he began a sweeping overhaul of top managers.
But "If you have $1 to invest in an oil company now, how would you justify investing it in Chevron?," said Mark Kelly, an analyst with the financial firm MKP Advisors in London. "The Hess deal delay has left Chevron with no clear (business) growth story to tell."
Jake Spiering, Chevron's head of investor relations, said the company's share performance this year has been hurt by the arbitration case that has encouraged arbitrage traders to short Chevron.
Elsewhere, Milana Vinn was first to report that Rapid7, a cybersecurity firm with a market value of about $2.5 billion, is exploring options with its investment bankers after attracting acquisition interest from buyout firms.
The Boston-based company, which is being advised by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, is in early-stage talks with private equity firms including Advent, Bain Capital and EQT, and is exploring a potential sale.
The discussions may not lead to a deal and Rapid7 could opt to stay independent.Rapid7's shares jumped more than 9% on the news
This is not the first time Rapid7 has attracted acquisition interest. Last year, the company explored its options after fielding interest from potential suitors, Reuters reported, before the talks fizzled out.
The discussions come at a time when Rapid7 faces pressure from activist investor Jana Partners, which has built a 5.8% stake in the company and urged it to explore a sale.
And finally, Max A. Cherney, Jeffrey Dastin, Dawn Chmielewski, Fanny Potkin and Stephen Nellis put together an excellent special report on Intel’s woes under CEO Pat Gelsinger at a time when it has become a takeover target.
Gelsinger took the reins as Intel CEO three years ago with hopes of reviving the American industrial icon. He soon made a big mistake.
Intel had a sweet deal going with Taiwan’s TSMC, the giant manufacturer of semiconductors for other companies. TSMC would make chips that Intel designed but could not produce. And it was offering deep discounts to Intel, say four people with knowledge of the agreement.
Instead of nurturing the relationship, Gelsinger – who hopes to restore Intel’s own manufacturing prowess – offended TSMC by calling out Taiwan’s precarious relations with China. “You don't want all of your eggs in the basket of a Taiwan fab,” he said in May 2021, using industry jargon for a chip fabrication plant. That December, encouraging U.S. investment in U.S. chipmakers, he said at a tech conference: “Taiwan is not a stable place.”
In public, TSMC downplayed the comments, with its founder calling Gelsinger“a bit rude.” Privately, TSMC said it would no longer honor the discount, the sources said: about 40% off the $23,000, 3-nanometer wafers on which TSMC would print chips for Intel. Intel had to pay full price, shrinking its profit margin on the deal.
Asked about the previously unreported episode, Intel said TSMC is an important partner with which it has a “healthy business relationship today.” TSMC told Reuters Intel is an important customer.
Gelsinger’s affront to Taiwan was part of a series of missteps during his time as Intel CEO. He inherited a troubled company that had lost its edge in manufacturing skills and had ceded to rivals the hugely lucrative markets for chips used in mobile phones and artificial intelligence. But Gelsinger compounded those problems.
This account of his rocky tenure is based on interviews with about four dozen current and former Intel employees and executives, as well as internal company videos, supplier documents and regulatory records.
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And here’s the best of the rest from the Reuters corporate finance file:
Siemens CEO Roland Busch is taking a small step towards a higher share price. The German trains-to-robots group is buying simulation-software maker Altair Engineering ALTR.O for $10 billion, after netting off cash. The rich transaction will take years to pay off. But if Busch can use the deal as a trigger to turn $155 billion Siemens into a much simpler company, he might one day earn a higher valuation.
Thyssenkrupp is focused on a 50:50 steel joint venture with Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky but will seek talks with other steelmakers should that deal falter, as the ailing conglomerate is sketching out a potential plan B for the unit.
ConocoPhillips is exploring a sale of some of its shale operations in the Permian Basin worth more than $1 billion, two years after an unsuccessful attempt to find a buyer for the same assets, people familiar with the matter said.
Mathias D?pfner will soon have a 4 billion euros war chest to spend. The controlling shareholder of German media group Axel Springer has made no secret of his ambition to keep expanding in English-speaking digital and print media, away from the company’s ageing and slow-growing home market. Even if the storied assets he might dream of are not available, he’s unlikely to remain on the M&A sidelines.
Tokyo Gas is in talks with Woodside Energy over taking a stake in a multi-billion-dollar Louisiana liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
RTL Group, Europe's largest broadcaster, is exploring options for its Fremantle production unit, including a merger, given a broader cutback in TV commissioning across the industry, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
European asset manager Aermont Capital has submitted the highest binding offer for Spanish data centre operator Nabiax, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
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Have a terrific weekend!
Best, Anirban
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Anirban Sen
Editor in Charge, U.S. Mergers & Acquisitions
Reuters News
Thomson Reuters
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