Softcat's $1.05 billion acquisition of GDT, the largest deal in the UK reseller's history, has drawn broadly positive broker reaction, tempered by a note that it ends what had been a steady organic growth story.
Softcat, the biggest UK solution provider by revenue, is buying the Dallas-based IT integrator to gain scale in North America.
The company today set out how it will fund the £785 million deal: an equity placing to raise £354 million at 1,890p a share, £100 million of existing cash, and new debt facilities of up to £550 million.
Peel Hunt, which rates the shares "buy" with a 2,447p target, reckons the deal is a play on enterprise adoption of artificial intelligence.
The broker argued that the bottleneck in corporate AI has shifted from securing chips to the harder work of integration, networking, storage and security, which is precisely what GDT sells.
It called GDT a scarce, at-scale US platform secured without a competitive auction, and estimated the deal would add at least 9% to earnings per share in the year to July 2028.
Panmure Liberum, also a buyer with a 1,920p target, highlighted GDT's cultural fit, pointing to a Glassdoor employee rating of 4.6, among the highest it has seen in IT services.
It expects GDT to generate around $240 million of gross profit and $80 million of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation this calendar year.
On the numbers, the brokers broadly agree the price is fair.
Peel Hunt and Panmure Liberum both put the deal at about 13.5 times EBITDA, which Panmure noted is above the multiples for US peers CDW, on 11 times, and Insight, on nine times.
Citi, however, saw the valuation as reasonable, at roughly 4.4 times gross profit and a discount to Softcat's own rating.
All three flagged the same tension.
Softcat raised its profit guidance alongside the deal, now expecting high-teens operating profit growth this year, but Citi cautioned that the acquisition dilutes what had until now been a purely organic performer.
Pro forma leverage is expected to reach 1.3 times, falling below one time by July 2028.
The deal is expected to complete by the end of the first quarter of 2027.
