_{DEAL OF THE MONTH}

Defense Deals Heat Up

If you’re like me, you probably remember thinking you were super cool with your Motorola Razr back in the day. Those really were the days… when Razr’s were a status symbol and Apple was just a computer.

Fast forward to today and Motorola (that is somehow worth ~$70 billion today) is dropping $4.4 billion on the acquisition of Silvus.

For those who haven’t been reading DARPA whitepapers in their free time, Silvus makes advanced wireless communications systems, particularly for military and public safety use.

Their bread and butter is rugged, high-performance mesh networking technology that allows secure and reliable communication in tough environments, think soldiers in the field or emergency response teams in disaster zones.

The deal consideration is $4.4 billion of upfront cash, with an additional $150 million of deferred consideration due in 2027 and $450 million due in 2028 depending on performance.

If you routinely keep up with Buysiders, you’ll know that I am a fan of calling out offensively high purchase multiples. Well, Motorola didn’t phone it in with this valuation. They paid a whopping 9.3x…REVENUE.

I’ll be honest, I would have expected Motorola’s share price to take a beating after announcing that multiple, but I was wrong (first time in how many issues…?)

Motorola’s share price is relatively flat since announcement, which is great news. Overall, Motorola has had strong performance recently. They are up 11.8% over the past year and almost 200% in the past five years.

The presentation on the deal didn’t give a ton of info, but if I can make a call on this one, I think that there are enough synergies to keep this deal accretive within the next 12-18 months, and it appears that Motorola shareholders agree with me.

Bonus chart:

_{NEWS ROUNDUP}

Top Reads

• Barclays to reduce IB headcount by 200

• Mosaic allows dealmakers run LBOs 15x faster than Excel*

• BharCap Partners amasses over $1 Billion for financial services deals

• Yale nears deal to sell $2.5 billion of PE stakes

• JPM takes a hardline on on-cycle recruiting

• Neuberger Berman closes $4 billion secondary fund

• AlpInvest Partners raises $4.1 billion for its ninth co-investment fund

• Blackstone acquires Warehouse REIT for £470 million

• Five Elms Capital closes $1.1 billion software-focused Fund VI

• Franklin Templeton to buy $5.7bn UK private credit firm

• Thoma Bravo raises $34.4 billion across three new funds

• Salesforce acquires Informatica for $8 billion

_{PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI}

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_{STRATEGIC DEAL OF THE MONTH}

Sanofi Finds a Blueprint

Grab your beaker, put on your lab coat, and don your safety goggles. It’s time to talk about drugs. Not the Breaking Bad kind though, the Breaking the Bank kind.

Here’s a quick primer on biotech for dummies (aka, me): you can think of it like any other company, just with more complicated products that require PhDs to make and discover.

They’ve got a pipeline of vaccines or treatments in development. Some will hit, most will flop. The hit rate usually depends on FDA approvals and whether the drug hits certain clinical trial milestones.

You can model what the TAM of any drug is relatively easily - assume a population, assume the percentage of the population that will have the disease, assume market penetration, and then assume a price. Just don’t ask Martin Shkreli for pricing advice.

With that modeling concept at hand, you can start thinking through how you would price Blueprint, a company that is a leader in the rare diseases space and has a strong pipeline of future drugs.

I’m not sure where you penciled out, but the experts at Sanofi put that value at $9.5 billion.

The consideration is set up as $129 / share in cash at closing, with one non-tradable contingent-value right per share with two potential milestone payments worth $2 / share and $4 / share. These delayed considerations are based on commercialization milestones for one of Blueprint’s drugs.

The purchase price of $129 / share represents a healthy premium to Blueprint’s current share price, and the market responded as you would expect. Blueprint’s share price rocketed up ~26% to $127 / share. Once again, it is unlikely that the deal will trade all the way to the full deal value to leave some room for the deal potentially not closing.

Sanofi on the other hand, has traded down over the past month. Dropping 5% in one day, which implies that investors think that Sanofi is overpaying for Blueprint.

Sanofi has reaffirmed its capital allocation commitments and has a track record of successful acquisitions. Additionally, Sanofi reaffirmed its share buyback plan for 2025, which is already 80% complete less than halfway through the year.

Hopefully, this reaffirmation of the capital allocation plan will be a net positive for Sanofi’s share price, but it doesn’t look like the market believes that yet.

While this deal is out of character for what we typically write about, hopefully you found it interesting to dip your toes into the world of biotech. Let us know if you’d like some other industries explored as well, I am happy to pretend to be an expert in any industry.

_{FINANCE LEGEND SPOTLIGHT}

The Last Rainmaker

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision”. - Ayn Rand, the Fountainhead

With deal flow relatively contained these past few weeks I found myself wondering what I could write about. I wanted something compelling that didn’t seem like I was just taking a flyer on deal no one cared about to fill column space.

Then on June 9th, 2025 one of the greatest rainmakers in Wall Street history announced his retirement. That felt like the perfect opportunity to add something valuable to this article.

After all, what would a deal focused newsletter be without dealmakers?

There are a few people in finance whose names are as synonymous with dealmaking as Ken Moelis.

He began as a banker on Wall Street some 40 years ago at Drexel Burnham Lambert under the tutelage of Mike Milken. The list of Drexel alumni who went on to accomplish financial greatness is absurdly long, but I know they are proud to count Moelis among their crew.

From Drexel he went to DLJ where he became head of corporate finance, then he eventually moved to UBS where he built out its U.S. investment banking franchise.

After finding a spark in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in 2006, Moelis went on to found his eponymous bank Moelis & Co in 2007. 

Focusing on advisory work, he went on a hiring spree during the GFC in a bet that soon to be called “boutique” banks would start to pull revenue away from the bulge brackets.

After only seven years, he took the Bank public in 2014 and has since seen his brainchild’s share price grow 124% since the IPO. I wonder if he paid himself a fee for that one!

In April 2018 following a run in the Bank’s stock price, Ken Moelis officially reached billionaire status, a rare feat amongst bank CEOs.

Moelis is known for being tough and believing in meritocracy, like the good old days of investment banking. While some disagreed with the Bank’s culture, the Bank’s successes speak for themselves and prove that Moelis built more than a bank, he built a philosophy.

While it’s not clear what this signals for the future of boutique banking, Moelis indicated in his retirement address that he is bullish on the future of M&A, the lifeblood of his firm.

Not to worry, after advising firms for his entire career, Moelis knows that a smooth transition is a key step in the process. He is leaving the firm in the capable hands of his co-founder and long-time business partner Navid Mahmoodzadegan. Additionally, Moelis co-founder and co-president Jeff Raich will become executive vice-chairman.

While his retirement marks the end of an era, it is certainly not the end for Moelis & Co. Moelis is simply doing what he does best: taking a step down a new road, armed with nothing but his own vision once again.

From the team here at Overheard on Wall Street, we would like to extend a sincere bravo to Ken Moelis for a legendary 40+ years on the Street.