March 25 (Reuters) - Investment firm MNC Capital said on Monday it has raised its all-cash bid to acquire Vista Outdoor (VSTO.N), opens  to $3 billion from $2.90 billion.

Shares of the sporting and outdoor products maker closed up 3% at $33.30 on Monday.

MNC Capital is offering $37.50 per share for all of Vista's shares, up from its earlier bid of $35. The new offer represents a premium of 16% to Vista's close on Friday.

Vista Outdoor confirmed it has received the updated offer.

The Anoka, Minnesota-headquartered company had rebuffed MNC Capital's earlier offer, stating the bid "significantly undervalued" Vista.
Vista is in the process of selling its sporting goods business to privately held Czech defense and civil manufacturing firm Czechoslovak Group (CSG) in a $1.91 billion deal announced last October.

The New York Times DealBook was the first to report on MNC Capital's improved offer.


https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/vista-outdoor-gets-improved-3-bln-bid-mnc-capital-2024-03-25/

Is this supposed to be a good thing or a bad one?

It literally depends who MNC capital is

Big company buys smaller company with good products and service, smaller company's products and customer service soon go to hell.
Even bigger company buys big company.   Products and customer service inevitably gets even worse.
Happens all the time, in every field of business.

Have Eric call me.

Remember when freedom group bought a bunch of gun companies and destroyed them?

Private equity kills everything.

They're ponying up 3 billion, which makes you think "Oh, things are going to get better!", but then the private equity says "But no, we want all that back, plus profit, so we're going to step in and tell you how to run your business."  And "How to run that business" tends to be "fire as many people as you can, cut benefits, make as many people contractors as you can, and then we're going to need to cut costs and cook the books even more to make it look, at least on paper, like you're more profitable, so we can sell you for a profit... before the inevitable collapse from our actions happen, that will be the next sucker's problem."

It's capitalism bro. Why do you hate capitalism?

Well they could also use the company as collateral to borrow a bunch of money, hang all of the debt around one of the subsidiaries neck and then cut them lose.

Yeah, I sure do!   American Outdoor Brands is another good example.   RCBS was SO much better before Vista, probably will be worse now.   It's all "Made in China" shit now anyway.

Fuck Vista.

No, no, they make your ammo.  THEY fuck YOU.

Probably a big difference being bought by MNC Capital or Berkshire Hathaway.

Hollow them out like the Mafia

Exactly

It's parasitic rent seeking behavior to make a productive thing unproductive and bankrupt by selling off the assets and debt loading the balance sheet effectively laundering money into the parent entity's accounts. Then they will legally do a pump and dump by offshoring the brand to make profits high on paper and then eject as the flaming hulk crashes into the ocean of insolvency.

Blackrock owns 20% of Vista. Don’t make deals with the devil.

ETA: Why is a holding company out of Quebec trying to buy them? This would mean Vista would be completely owned by antigun people.

Looks like somebody bought themselves a Congressman over the weekend

Representative Clay Higgins, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, has asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to "thoroughly review national security concerns" in the proposed sale of a US ammunition manufacturer to a firm based in the Czech Republic.

The concerns involve the sale of Vista Outdoor's ammunition business to the holding company Czechoslovak Group, or CSG, which Higgins said would weaken national security if the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, or Cfius, approves the sale.

The Louisiana Republican said in a letter that the sale of Vista Sporting Products to CSG would result in the firm controlling "nearly 70% of production capacity for primers in the Western world." Primers are the component of a bullet that ignites the charge, sending the projectile down the barrel of a pistol or rifle.

"For these reasons, I request Cfius to carefully examine national security concerns of the proposed acquisition," Higgins wrote in his letter to Yellen, adding that Cfius should also examine any "past or current relationship between CSG's owners and foreign adversaries." Higgins contended that CSG had "ties to Russia and China."

CSG spokesman Andrej Cirtek said in a statement that "any speculations about CSG's ties to Russia or China are nonsense. This is proved by facts: We support Ukraine with much-needed deliveries of artillery ammunition, tanks or artillery systems."

Cirtek said that companies under the CSG banner have secret-level security clearances in the US, deliver products to North Atlantic Treaty Organization members and work with US defense contractors, which wouldn't be possible if the company had ties to US adversaries such as Russia and China.

So much under so few is never good.