William Lynn, CEO of Arlington, Virginia-based Leonardo DRS, said he believes trading on the stock market will give the company “much more strategic flexibility to build” and an opportunity to generate cash to fund future acquisitions, Breaking Defense reported Monday.
In June, Leonardo DRS and Israel-based RADA Electronic Industries (Nasdaq: RADA) agreed to merge in an all-stock transaction to establish a public company that will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “DRS.”
“We’ve had great organic growth over the past several years. This gives us the ability to also look at acquisitions, as part of increasing the value — which going back to [Leonardo], of course they want us to increase our value — but it gives us a way of self-financing acquisitions,” he told the publication in an October interview.
With the deal, Lynn noted that Leonardo DRS is “trying to spread our wings a bit” when it comes to delivering support to the U.S. military with a focus on advanced sensing, force protection, network computing and electric power and propulsion business areas.
He said he expects the company to start trading on Nasdaq after Thanksgiving once the paperwork related to its combination with RADA is completed.
On Oct. 24, the planned merger received clearance from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and both parties said they expect to close the transaction in late November or early December.
