While the price might have been lower than some had hoped, Dun & Bradstreet Holdings Inc. shareholders overwhelmingly approved the Jacksonville-based business data firm’s $7.7 billion buyout deal with Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. at a virtual special meeting June 12.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, 345.9 million shares of Dun & Bradstreet were voted in favor of the deal and only 3 million were opposed.
Dun & Bradstreet announced the deal March 24 in which Clearlake will pay $9.15 per share to acquire the company.
That is well below Dun & Bradstreet’s initial public offering price of $22 a share in July 2020. It was also below its closing price of $10.29 on Aug. 1, 2024, before news leaked out that the company was talking to potential buyers.
The agreement was subject to a 30-day go-shop period for a possible higher offer but no other bids were made.
Dun & Bradstreet’s largest shareholder, Cannae Holdings Inc., pledged to support the deal with Clearlake when the agreement was signed.
Cannae, which owns 13.5% of the stock, is the investment company spun off from Jacksonville-based Fidelity National Financial Inc.
Dun & Bradstreet’s SEC filing said it anticipates closing the buyout in the third quarter this year.
Redwire Corp. completed its $925 million acquisition of Edge Autonomy on June 13, a deal that broadens the Jacksonville-based space technology company’s business and significantly increases its revenue.
Edge Autonomy provides uncrewed airborne system technology that establishes Redwire as an aerospace and defense company, CEO Peter Cannito said in a news release.
“With Edge Autonomy, we are uniquely positioned to transform the future of multi-domain operations and provide decisive advantages to U.S. and allied warfighters,” he said.
“We look forward to leveraging our combined capabilities to enable the most critical missions as we strive to achieve air and space superiority and create significant value for Redwire’s customers and shareholders.”
Financial documents filed by Redwire after the deal closed show Edge Autonomy had $195 million in revenue in 2024 and $35.4 million in the first quarter this year.
Redwire had $304 million in 2024 revenue and $61.4 million in the first quarter of 2025.
Redwire is projecting revenue of $535 million to $605 million for the combined company this year.
Redwire paid $160 million in cash and issued $765 million in stock to buy Edge Autonomy.
Edge Autonomy was owned by an affiliate of AE Industrial Partners, the company that formed Redwire by merging space technology companies together starting in 2020.
AE still controlled about 43% of Redwire stock and with the shares it received in the buyout, it again became the majority shareholder with 60.3%.
Shareholders of Fidelity National Financial approved a redomestication plan at a virtual shareholders meeting June 11 that moves the company’s incorporation from Delaware to Nevada.
The title insurance company’s headquarters remain in Jacksonville.
“The Redomestication did not result in any change in the business, physical location, management, assets, liabilities or net worth of the Company, nor did it result in any change in location of the Company’s current employees, including management,” Fidelity said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
“The daily business operations of the Company will continue as they were conducted prior to the Redomestication,” it said.
Fidelity joins other companies that have moved their incorporation out of Delaware because of a perceived unfavorable legal climate.
Las Vegas has become an important center for Fidelity’s business activities after Chairman Bill Foley moved there 10 years ago to run his National Hockey League expansion franchise.
However, the company said there are no plans to move the headquarters out of Jacksonville.
Fidelity had a similar redomestication proposal that was narrowly defeated by stockholders at the 2024 annual meeting, but the company said it had discussions with several shareholders to address concerns about the move before this year’s meeting.
The redomestication was approved by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, with 147.1 million shares voted in favor and 74.9 million shares opposed.
While economic uncertainty is making headlines, it is not having a big impact on demand at Fidelity National Information Services Inc., or FIS, said CEO Stephanie Ferris.
“The actual sales pipelines continue to be very robust even with all the uncertainty that you see around the globe,” Ferris said June 10 in a talk to the Mizuho Technology Conference.
After selling off its Worldpay merchant payments business, the Jacksonville-based financial technology company is focusing mainly on its core bank technology business.
“The banking sales pipeline continues to be strong because, remember, where we serve in the banking business is around how to grow, protect, and run your business,” Ferris said.
“In banking, that really means digital banking, payments, core banking, and technology that’s really critical for you to either grow the bank or run the bank, and so it’s not discretionary,” she said.
Mizuho analyst Dan Dolev, who hosted the session with Ferris, said in a research note that FIS is in a better position after divesting Worldpay.
“We expect improved stability given the high recurring revenue nature of Banking and Capital Markets businesses to be a key feature of the FIS investment thesis over time,” he said.
FIS was spun off from Fidelity National Financial in 2006.
CSX Corp., which has been working for months on new contracts with its labor unions, announced an agreement was ratified by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.
The deal covers about 3,400 locomotive engineers, or about 20% of the railroad company’s frontline workforce.
CSX said it has now reached agreements with 13 other unions in the last 10 months, covering nearly 75% of its unionized workforce.
The company said in a June 11 news release the only major workgroup not covered by new agreements are trainmen and conductors represented by the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers, or SMART-TD.
Jacksonville-based investment firm Water Street Capital Inc. said June 11 it nominated a full slate of new directors for REC Silicon ASA, after announcing in April it opposed a buyout offer for the Norway-based company.
Water Street controls 8.26% of the silicon products company.
Hanwha Solutions Corp., which owns a third of REC Silicon’s stock, agreed in April to buy all the remaining shares for 2.20 Norwegian kroner each.
REC Silicon said that was 28% higher than the stock’s closing price on the Oslo Stock Exchange before the deal was announced, but Water Street said in a news release it undervalues the company by more than 90%.
“The incumbent REC Silicon Board, which is comprised of several Hanwha executives, has proven, in our view, that it is not representing the best interests of the Company and its shareholders,” Water Street Founder and Principal Gilchrist Berg said in the release.
“The recent share purchase proposal by Hanwha, if executed, significantly undervalues the intellectual property and assets of a company deeply respected across the silane-based materials industry globally and invalidates the efforts of hundreds of REC Silicon employees,” he said.
Water Street, founded by Berg nearly four decades ago, is not known as an activist investor.
However, Water Street said it is nominating five directors to take over the board at REC Silicon’s June 25 shareholders meeting.
“Our director nominees possess decades of relevant industry experience and are committed to working on behalf of all REC Silicon shareholders, large and small,” Berg said.
“The nomination committee has received indications that an alternative proposal for board constitution will be presented at the annual general meeting, as further presented on prnewswire.com, but the committee has not had the opportunity to assess the implication of such proposal in its process,” REC Silicon said in a June 14 release responding to Water Street’s announcement.
For the second time in less than two months, Ascendiant Capital Markets analyst Edward Woo raised his price target for Duos Technologies Group Inc. as the Jacksonville-based company expands into new business lines.
Duos, which provided railroad safety technology, added a new subsidiary last year that provides artificial intelligence data centers in rural markets and another business that installs power systems.
“Duo’s new 3 businesses have long commercialization challenges ahead, but we believe the approximate billion dollar market potential presents high rewards for the risks,” Woo said in a June 16 research note.
Woo maintains a “buy” rating on the stock and after raising his price target from $7.50 to $9 in April, he raised the target again to $11, with the stock trading at $7.78.
“This represents significant upside from the current share price and we believe appropriately balances out the high risks with large upside opportunities,” he said.
Safe & Green Holdings Corp. said June 10 it engaged an outside firm “to support efforts to investigate and address potentially illegal trading activity” in its stock.
“This includes suspected naked short selling and market manipulation involving the Company’s common stock,” the company said in a news release.
The developer of modular structures was previously headquartered in Jacksonville but moved to Miami in 2023.
Safe & Green’s stock had been trading below $1 since February but spiked above $1 in early June. It was trading at 84 cents at the time of its announcement.