Smiths Industries – large conglomerate discount

I have put in about 12% of the portfolio into Smith’s Industries at 932  This is a FTSE100 listed Engineer involved in oil and gas, medical, detection and interconnect related businesses amongst others…

It has a market cap of £3.7bn with 818m of debt the pension deficit is circa 108m .  In 2013 Smiths got a £3.1bn offer for the medical division, in 2012 an offer of £2.45bn was made.  Both were turned down.  The medical division is earning more now and multiples are higher across most medical device producers.  

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