On July 20, 2021, Autodesk, Inc. announced that it has terminated discussions to acquire Altium Limited.

Autodesk itself reacted with a brief statement only: “Autodesk has a long track record of disciplined strategic acquisitions,” said Andrew Anagnost, CEO of Autodesk. “While we did verbally improve our initial proposal, we were unable to agree on the basis to advance discussions. We respect the leadership team at Altium and wish them the best with their business.”

Already on the morning on the 19th, the word spread that Autodesk was no longer interested in a deal. After that, Altium went into a trading halt Monday morning, while shares dropped more than 10 per cent on this speculation. Last month Altium turned down a first offer from the design software company, but kept negotiations going in order to get a higher offer. Altium’s stock valued has stabilised overtime, but future competing bids might be impacted by Autodesk’s initial offer of $38.50 that was turned down.

Back in June, when the news came out that Autodesk made this offer, culminating to $5 billion, the interested party described Altium as ‘a global software company headquartered in San Diego, California and publicly traded on the Australian Securities Exchange. The company develops software used by printed circuit board (PCB) designers and electrical engineers at organizations around the world to deliver connected, intelligent products’. The initial proposal represented a 41.5% premium over Altium’s closing price of AUD$27.21 on June 4, 2021, one business day prior to the announcement by Altium of Autodesk’s proposal and a premium of over 47.4% to the one-month volume-weighted average price. Autodesk intended to finance the transaction using cash on hand and debt financing.

investors.autodesk.com