France’s Schneider Electric said Monday it had agreed to buy PTC in an all-cash deal valuing the US software company’s equity at around $22.6 billion, confirming reports from Sunday. The $205-per-share offer implies an enterprise value of $23.7 billion for Boston-based PTC and represents a 42.3 percent premium to its last closing price — and a 46.1 percent premium to the 30-day volume-weighted average.
The deal will be financed through a combination of equity and new debt issuance and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2027, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals. Schneider estimates €250 million of cost synergies by year three and approximately €800 million of revenue synergies from cross-selling across complementary customer footprints. The transaction is expected to be immediately low-single-digit accretive to adjusted earnings per share in the first full year.
Investors hated the price, at least initially. Schneider’s shares fell nearly 10 percent in early Paris trading as investors weighed the size of the acquisition and the premium, wiping close to €15 billion ($17 billion) off its market capitalisation. PTC shares jumped 34.4 percent in US premarket trading. Jefferies noted that AI disruption fears are weighing on software valuations — which allows acquiring PTC at a decade-low valuation but could still weigh on Schneider after the deal.
The strategic logic is the data-center buildout. Schneider, once known for fuses and circuit breakers, now supplies cooling units, server racks and power distribution for data centers, and the PTC acquisition adds product-design and lifecycle-management software to its industrial software and AI business. CEO Olivier Blum told investors that PTC’s engineering and design data would strengthen Schneider’s ability to deploy AI across customers’ industrial operations: “Data is becoming a very critical layer” for extracting value from AI.