IMI PLC (LSE:IMI) said it plans to acquire the German company Bahr Modultechnik Holding GmbH for €98mln (£83mln) and expects to complete the transaction by mid-June 2022.
Bahr is an electric linear motion specialist, majority owned by IK Partners. It will become part of IMI Precision Engineering's industrial automation unit, enabling it to deliver a power agnostic offering of pneumatic and electric linear motion systems, IMI said in a statement.
Bahr has customers in automation-driven end markets, such as pharmacy automation, warehouse automation and robotics.
Cihan Halavurt, co-chief executive, and Dirk Bahr, co-founder at Bahr, will remain with the business after the acquisition.
IMI noted that the purchase price is around 13.5x stand-alone forecasted 2022 EBITDA. Bahr is expected to be margin and growth accretive to IMI and will generate a financial return in excess of IMI's cost of capital after three years.
During the pandemic, Bahr's revenue grew at a 12% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2019 and 2021, with 27% growth for the first four months of 2022.