Cubic stockholders vote 'yes' on sale to Veritas & activist investor

The votes have been counted and a majority of Cubic Corp.’s stockholders have signed off on the sale of the company to Veritas Capital and activist hedge fund Elliott Management.

Approximately 70.3 percent of Cubic’s shares issued and outstanding as of March 18 voted to approve the revised agreement, Cubic said Tuesday.

Veritas and Evergreen Coast Capital, the private equity arm of Elliott, are paying $2.38 billion in cash for Cubic. That price increase of approximately 7.7 percent from the original $2.21 billion cash portion.

The buyers had to raise their offer more than once in March after Singapore Technologies Engineering put in at least two unsolicited bids for Cubic, which then had to restart the sale process given its fiduciary duty as a publicly-traded company.

In the end, San Diego-headquartered Cubic decided the time value of money being offered by Veritas and Elliott was a better deal than ST Engineering’s higher bid.

Veritas now awaits a second shareholder vote out of another publicly-traded company they are acquiring in Perspecta, who has scheduled the special meeting for May 5 to decide on that sale agreement.