Looking at the history of intense scrutiny and strict conditions for winning approval, no U.S. technology company can take approval from European Union regulators on a big deal for granted.
That’s why the news from regulators on acquisitions planned by Danaher (DHR) and Nvidia (NVDA) is a big deal.
Danaher has won conditional approval from European Union regulars for its $21.4 billion acquisition of the biopharma unit of General Electric. The acquisition of this part of GE Life Sciences (the unit generated $3 billion in revenue in 2018) strengthens Danaher’s drive to become a major life sciences player. Danaher would acquire process chromatography hardware and consumables, cell culture media, single-use technology products, developmental instrumentation and consumables, and service businesses. Danaher agreed to sell five businesses to meet regulators’ concerns on competition in the European Union market. Danaher expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter.
Nvidia has received orders that European Union antitrust authorities are prepared to clear the company’s $6.8 billion bid for Mellanox Technologies (MLNX) without conditions. Mellanox, based in Israel and the United States, makes chips and other hardware for data center servers that power cloud computing. Nvidia has been pushing into networking and cloud connectivity as a way to expand its core datacenter business and acquiring Mellanox would aid that effort. The data center business accounts for almost a third of Nvidia’s sales. Nvidia outbid Intel (INTC)  in the acquisition, Wall Street sources report. (Intel has not confirmed pursuing a bid for Mellanox.)
With European Union approval achieved, Nvidia still has to win regulatory approval in China where Mellanox has customers that include Alibaba (BABA) and Baidu (BIDU). The thinking on Wall Street is that the trade war between the United States and China, and especially the restrictions that the United States has placed on the purchase of U.S. technology products by China’s Huawei Technologies, have slowed down Chinese regulatory action on the deal.
Yesterday Nvidia announced deals with Didi Chuxing, China’s ride-sharing company, Alibaba, and Baidu for its GPUs and artificial intelligence technologies.
Both Danaher and Nvidia are members of my Jubak Picks portfolio. Shares of Danaher are up 75.58% as of the close on December 19 from my initial purchase on December 29, 2017. Shares of Nvidia are up 19.96% since my initial purchase on December 29, 2017.
As of today I’m raising the target price on both stocks: on Danaher my target price goes to $165 from a previous $135 and on Nvidia by target price goes to $270 from a previous $260.
