Who might buy Axalta? Latest deal chatter hasn’t boosted Philly firm’s share price

Investors haven’t gotten too excited about last week’s reports that Axalta Coating Systems, the Philadelphia-based auto-paint giant, has drawn interest from a couple of would-be buyers.

Unnamed investment bankers trying to stir interest in a deal that could bring them a lucrative payday and boost other coatings-company asset values have told Bloomberg and other news media that Pittsburgh-based PPG and Japan-based Kansai Paint have expressed interest in Axalta.

But share prices for the company, sold by the DuPont Co. to Carlyle Group in 2013 and resold on the stock market the next year at a fat mark-up, have remained around $30, same as a week ago and well within the range that Axalta established in 2014-15, its first year as a public company. Axalta shares fell $0.51 or 1.69% Monday to $29.64.

Axalta employs around 600 in the Philadelphia area, including at its year-old global R&D center at the Navy Yard and its U.S. headquarters near Chadds Ford.

The stock jumped from the mid $20s to around $30 last month as the company said it hired investment banks Evercore and Barclays to look for buyers or other “strategic” alternatives.

But Axalta has been here before. Talks with Akzo Nobel and Nippon Paints (which offered $9.1 billion in late 2017) fell apart without a deal.

The industrial-paints business has been consolidating into a handful of large multinationals in recent years, and Axalta was an acquirer of a string of smaller paint and coatings businesses under its founding CEO, Charlie Shaver, who stepped down from the day job to head Nouryel — Akzo Nobel’s specialty-chemicals spin-off — and left the Axalta board after it hired the investment bankers last month.