Rentokil Initial sells facilities business to focus on rat-catching

Since his appointment as CEO last August, Mr Ransom has made 10 acquisitions to bolster Rentokils market share in its target markets. In the medium term, the company is forecasting around 5pc growth. This will be achieved through ongoing restructuring, a renewed focus on organic growth, as well as further acquisitions.

Acquisitions tend to be opportunistic with periods of feast and famine, he said. We are not going to go out and aggressively spend money. We are going to be disciplined.

We will also be constantly looking around the fringes of the portfolio to see if there are smaller parts of the business that we can sell to create more shareholder value but there will be no other major divestments.

Negotiations for the sale of Initial Facilities began in October last year, and Rentokil aims to complete the process by the end of March.

Adrian Ringrose, chief executive of Interserve, said that the deal brought his company valuable market share in a fragmented industry: Interserve is the number six player in this market, Initial Facilities is the number nine, together, we become the number three, he said. This deal was a very good fit for us.

Following the announcement, Interserve completed a placing of 12,897,771 new ordinary shares - 9.99pc of its issued ordinary share capital prior to the placing - at 580p apiece, a premium on yesterday's closing price of 574.5p. The placing raised 74.8m.

Read more here:
Rentokil Initial sells facilities business to focus on rat-catching