De Nora flies, market rewards acquisition of Bw Water

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - The acquisition of Bw Water gives wings to Industrie De Nora on the Italian Stock Exchange. The company announced in the morning the acquisition of 100 per cent of Bw Water (Bww), a Singapore-based global player in integrated water treatment solutions, for an enterprise value of between USD 61.5 million and USD 66.5 million. De Nora will finance the transaction through bank debt, mainly through a EUR 60m Term Loan Facility with a five-year maturity, granted by a pool of financial institutions. In 2025, Bww reported revenues of $91.5m (expected to grow to around $130m in 2026) and EBITDA of $3m.

The transaction allows De Nora to strengthen the water technologies business by integrating engineering and system integration skills, accelerating the transition to a turnkey solutions-oriented model along the entire value chain. "The acquisition of Bww is fully consistent with our long-term strategy in water treatment, which involves combining a product-centric model with a customer-oriented approach focused on turnkey solutions. This transaction represents a key step to strengthen our positioning along the value chain and to enter high-potential markets such as semiconductors, desalination, mining, as well as pharmaceuticals and food," commented CEO Paolo Dellachà in a note.

Indeed, the key element of this acquisition, stress the analysts of Banca Akros, 'is access to new high-growth markets, in particular semiconductors, desalination and mining, as well as a stronger geographic presence in South-East Asia'. From a financial point of view, 'the Ev/Ebitda 2025 multiple appears relatively high (around 20x), reflecting Bw's current low profitability', point out the experts, who nevertheless specify that 'including the expected cost synergies (around $7m when fully operational within three years), the multiple falls between 6.2x and 6.7x, consistent with a significant improvement in profitability'. At this stage, "based on preliminary estimates, we anticipate a low single-digit dilutive effect on EPS 2026 excluding synergies; including them, we instead estimate a limited increase to a low single digit," the analysts conclude.