Intertek Plc is a British multinational leader in the testing, inspection, and certification sector. A FTSE 100 company, Intertek services clients in a variety of industries such as manufacturing, energy, infrastructure and transportation.

Since April 2026, Intertek has been the subject of four take-private bids by EQT AB, a Swedish private equity firm. The offers, which ended in a final bid valuing the company at £9.2B (about £60.1 per share) have all been rejected by Intertek’s board, arguing that the offers all fundamentally undervalue the firm and come with serious financing and execution risks. Previous bids have come in at £58, £54, and £51.50 per share.

At the same time, Intertek’s management has announced it is initiating a strategic review to split the company’s lower-margin Energy & Infrastructure business from its Testing & Assurance businesses. 

Intertek Energy and Infrastructure generated £1.576B in revenue in FY25 with an operating margin of 10.1%. On the other hand, the Testing and Assurance business generated £1.855B GBP in revenue with an operating margin of roughly 24.8%. 

Fundamentally, the idea behind a split-up would be to allow the high-margin and growth Testing and Assurance business unit to receive a higher valuation than it would if attached to the lower-margin, lower-growth Energy & Infrastructure division. In recent years, private equity firms across the middle-market, like Blackstone and American Securities, have been highly active in the TIC sector due to its non-cyclical and recurring revenue generation. Intertek Energy & Infrastructure could be an attractive target for infrastructure and private equity buyers looking for stable exposure to global energy, power, and utilities.

Activist investor Matt Peltz, the son of legendary investor Nelson Peltz, has built up a roughly 1% stake in the company and has allegedly been pushing the board to look into strategic alternatives to an all-cash acquisition by EQT.

EQT’s counterargument is that shareholders ought to take the cash premium now rather than wait for a risky and potentially messy breakup process. DuPont Chemicals, for instance, is often used as an example of a demerger gone wrong. Proponents of the split believed that the firm would be more valuable with its specialty chemicals division separated from the firm’s commodity chemicals business. Though the firm eventually went through the demerger, it was far more expensive and took far longer than initially expected.

Overall, EQT’s point seems to have merit. The bull case is that Energy and Infrastructure sells at a strategic premium of roughly 11–12x EV/EBIT (for roughly a £1.7–1.9bn EV from an infrastructure PE or strategic buyer), Intertek uses the proceeds to pay down their £1.32bn net debt entirely, leaving Testing and Assurance as a debt-free, 25% margin business. A very modest re-rating from the current blended 15.2x EV/EBIT to 20x on Testing and Assurance’s £460.8m standalone EBIT would imply an equity value of ~£9.2bn, or roughly £58/share before any growth premium, precisely the number the board told EQT wasn't enough.

In recent years, companies listed in the US have often traded at 20-30x forward earnings versus roughly 10-15x on the London Stock Exchange, reflecting the deeper liquidity and larger institutional investor base to be found in US capital markets. This may lead investors to believe that they may receive a premium if the Testing & Assurance and Energy & Infrastructure businesses relist in the United States. However, the redomicile bull case assumes US investors will pay 25–30x EV/EBIT for a UK-regulated, GBP-reporting business. The counterargument to this would be that the NYSE/LSE multiple difference may not be entirely due to deeper capital markets, but also because of a difference in the types of companies listed in the two countries. The NYSE and NASDAQ have far more high-margin technology and platform companies than banks, energy firms, mining firms, and other sectors that trade at low multiples on other stock exchanges.

Given the Testing, Inspection, and Certification (TIC) sector’s inherent fragmentation and clear trend toward consolidation, the EQT bid makes a lot of sense. Importantly, EQT's cash offer of £60 per share is strong and essentially exceeds a theoretical bull case for a risky demerger while stripping away all the execution and financing risk.