Railroad Manufacturer American Railcar Industries Sells for $1.75 Billion

​During the week ending October 27, M&A markets had a total of 36 deal transactions announced for a total of $7.7 billion in disclosed funding. Six of thirteen deals with disclosed terms had price tags between $100 million and $500 million and only two deals were greater than $1 billion. Oil and gas companies had five deals worth $4.3 billion, and the South was the most favored target geography with eleven deals. The following are a selection of transactions from last week in Skyline’s core industry focuses:

• Davis Transfer Co., a family owned Georgia trucking company, has agreed to a $53 million takeover bid from USA Truck (NAS: USAK). Davis Transfer, serving the dry truckload market, operates 250 tractors and 800 trailers through its three terminals located in Georgia and Florida. The goal of the acquisition is to give USA Truck a stronger presence in the Southeast.

• U.S. buyout firm ITE Management is set to acquire American Railcar Industries (NAS: ARII) through a $1.75 billion leveraged buyout bid. American Railcar is a manufacturer of covered hopper and specialized tank railcars and is headquartered in the suburbs of St. Louis. The firm also leases and services its manufactured cars to third parties.

• E2open, a provider of cloud-based, supply chain management software, is set to acquire INTTRA, a software platform for ocean container shipment management. INTTRA’s platform offers ocean schedule viewing, container booking, and shipment volume optimization solutions. E2open will integrate INTTRA’s booking software into its own platform, expanding its reach into transportation transactions.

• Oracle, one of the world’s largest cloud computing firms, has announced the acquisition of data startup DataFox, who has a large company database of 2.8 million public and private firms. The company utilizes artificial intelligence to glean predictive insights into business trends. Oracle has no specific roadmap for DataFox but is hoping to leverage its new acquisition’s AI technology to provide data-driven strategy recommendations to its clients.

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• London-based Blue Vision Labs, developers of augmented reality technology, were acquired by Lyft last week. Blue Vision’s technology utilizes a number of smartphone quality cameras at street level to create augmented reality layers for self-driving car interpretation. Blue Vision will work with Lyft’s Level 5 self-driving team. The deal is Lyft’s first step out of the U.S.