Up 33%. Down 11%. The Two Sides of $28 Billion in Deals.
PTC and RXO soared on takeover offers while their buyers sank, and a third deal on Tuesday showed why. Here is why targets jump and acquirers drop, what the gap between price and offer is telling you, and why a stock-funded bid is a moving number.
Two big takeovers were announced on the same morning. The companies being bought soared. The companies doing the buying sank. That split is not a fluke, and at 5% interest rates it carries more information than usual. Here is how to read a deal announcement from whichever seat you are sitting in.
HeyTheo Research · Friday, October 9, 2026
Quick Read
On Monday, Oct 5, Schneider Electric agreed to buy PTC for $22.6 billion in cash, and C.H. Robinson agreed to buy RXO in a deal valued at $5.8 billion. Together: about $28 billion.
The targets jumped: PTC rose 33% and RXO rose 23%. The buyers fell: C.H. Robinson dropped about 11%, and Schneider closed down about 7% in Paris after falling nearly 10% during the day.
Four days later, neither target trades at its offer. PTC sits 5.8% below its $205 cash price. Most of that gap is simply interest for waiting.
A stock-funded offer is a moving number. RXO's headline $30.25 was worth about $29.35 at Thursday's close, because the buyer's own stock fell.
What happened on Monday
Deal | Paid in | Target's move | Buyer's move | Expected to close |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Schneider Electric buys PTC, $22.6B | All cash, $205 a share | PTC +33% | Schneider about -7% | By Q3 2027 |
C.H. Robinson buys RXO, $5.8B | $17.25 cash plus 0.0856 buyer shares | RXO +23% | C.H. Robinson about -11% | First half of 2027 |
Source: company announcements, exchange data. Moves are Monday, Oct 5 closes. Deal values are equity value for PTC and enterprise value for RXO.
A third deal followed on Tuesday, and it broke the pattern in a useful way. Private equity firm CD&R and McKesson signed an agreement to buy Option Care Health for $32.05 a share in cash, about a 37% premium, valuing the company at about $5.8 billion. Option Care's shares had already jumped about 22% on Monday evening when the talks were first reported.
McKesson's shares barely moved. It is putting in about $1.4 billion for a 49% stake, with CD&R taking control. A small bill, shared with a partner, gives the buyer's shareholders less to worry about. The size of the buyer's drop tends to track the size of the bill.
Why the target jumps
This part is simple. A buyer has to pay more than the market price to win control. That extra is called the premium.
Schneider offered $205 for a stock that had closed near $144. That is a 42% premium. C.H. Robinson's offer was about 27% above RXO's recent average price.
The target's shareholders get that premium almost at once, in the share price. They did nothing differently on Monday than on Friday. The value was handed to them.
Why the buyer drops
Now look at it from the other side. Whatever the target's shareholders gained, the buyer's shareholders agreed to pay.
Three worries hit the buyer's stock at the same time.
The price. A 42% premium has to be earned back. Schneider says the deal will save about 250 million euros a year in costs by the third year. C.H. Robinson promises $300 million a year within two. Those are forecasts. The premium is a fact.
The funding. Schneider plans to borrow up to 17 billion euros and sell up to 6 billion euros of new shares. New shares dilute existing owners. New debt at today's rates is expensive. Both buyers are pausing share buybacks.
The distraction. Combining two companies takes years of management attention.
This pattern is one of the most studied in finance. Decades of research find that target shareholders capture most of the gain on announcement day, while the buyer's shareholders on average earn close to nothing, and the largest deals have tended to fare worst.
It is an average, not a law. Some acquisitions create a great deal of value. The point is that the burden of proof sits with the buyer.
Research cue · try it in HeyTheo
If you own a company that just announced an acquisition, ask Theo for the bull case, bear case and what to watch, and add: "what has to go right for this deal to pay for itself?" You get the assumptions laid out so you can test them. Open HeyTheo
The gap nobody mentions
Here is the detail most coverage skips. Four days after the announcements, neither target trades at its offer.
Target | Offer | Thursday's close | Gap to the offer |
|---|---|---|---|
PTC | $205.00 cash | $193.73 | 5.8% |
RXO | $30.25 headline value | $28.93 | 4.6% |
RXO | Package worth $29.35 at Thursday's prices | $28.93 | 1.4% |
For comparison: 2-year Treasury yield | 4.75% a year |
Source: company announcements, exchange data, US Treasury. Prices as of the Thursday, Oct 8 close. Gaps are desk calculations.
Why would anyone sell PTC at $194 when $205 in cash is on the table?
Because the cash does not arrive until the deal closes, which Schneider expects by the third quarter of 2027. And because the deal could still fail. Regulators could block it. Shareholders could vote no. Financing could fall through.
So the gap pays for two things: waiting and risk.
At today's rates, waiting is expensive. Money parked in a 2-year Treasury earns 4.75% a year for doing nothing. A buyer of PTC at $194 who waits about a year for $205 earns 5.8%. Most of that gap is just interest. The slice left over, about one point, is what the market is charging for the chance the deal breaks.
That is a useful reading. A thin leftover slice means the market thinks the deal is likely to close. If the gap widens in the coming months, the market is growing doubtful, often before any headline says why.
Research cue · try it in HeyTheo
Set a trigger on a takeover target you follow: "tell me if this stock falls more than 10% below the offer price." A widening gap is the market's early doubt about a deal. You can check the rule behind the alert before acting on it. Open HeyTheo
A stock deal is a moving number
PTC's holders are promised a fixed $205 in cash. RXO's holders are promised something that moves.
Each RXO share gets $17.25 in cash plus 0.0856 of a C.H. Robinson share. The headline value of $30.25 assumed a buyer share price of about $152. Holders can ask for all cash instead, but those requests are scaled back to keep the overall mix at about 57% cash and 43% stock.
Then the buyer's stock fell. C.H. Robinson closed at $141.34 on Thursday. At that price the same package is worth about $29.35, roughly 3% less than the headline. The offer shrank because the buyer's own shareholders marked it down.
That is also why RXO's gap looks so small against the package. Traders in stock deals often hedge the stock portion, so the gap there says less about deal risk than it does in an all-cash deal like PTC's.
When a deal is paid partly in stock, the target's shareholders become the buyer's shareholders. They inherit the buyer's problems along with the premium.
Why this matters more at 5% yields
Deals have slowed. Worldwide, about $4.44 trillion of takeovers were announced in the first nine months of 2026, the second-strongest such period on record. But the third quarter cooled as borrowing costs rose.
High yields change the math in three ways. Debt-funded offers cost more to finance. Waiting for a deal to close costs more, which widens the gap. And cash-rich buyers, or buyers who bring a partner, gain an edge over buyers who must borrow alone. McKesson's structure this week is one example.
We covered the rate backdrop in our note on jobs, bonds and the Nasdaq. The 10-year Treasury touched its highest level since 2002 on Wednesday, Oct 7. That is the cost every acquirer now has to beat.
Research cue · try it in HeyTheo
When one company in an industry gets bought, rivals often rise in sympathy. Open the screener, pull the target's closest peers, and check the money-flow view to see whether money moved into the whole group or only one name. A sympathy move with no bid behind it tends to fade. Open HeyTheo
Research it yourself: rules HeyTheo tracks
Deal-gap trigger. Flags when a takeover target's price moves more than 10% below its offer. The gap is the market's running vote on whether the deal closes.
Buyer drawdown trigger. Flags any holding that falls more than 5% on the day it announces an acquisition, then tracks whether it recovers over the next ten trading days.
Sympathy basket. Groups a target's closest peers and tracks them against the index after a deal, to separate a re-rating from a one-day reaction.
Ask Theo. Try: "Has this company made a large acquisition before, and how did the stock do afterward?" or "Give me the bear case for this deal if borrowing costs stay above 5%."
Check the rule behind any trigger before acting on it. You trade through your own broker; HeyTheo helps you decide.
The Premium Paid
Every deal announcement is the same story told from two chairs. One group of shareholders is handed a premium. Another group agrees to pay it and then has to earn it back.
Monday's split, up 33% and down 11%, is that story in a single trading day. Tuesday's deal showed the other side of it: a buyer paying a small share of the bill barely moved. The market did not say any of these deals were bad. It said the buyers have something to prove, and it put a price on the wait.
Whichever seat you are in, the questions are the same three: what was paid, how it is funded, and what the gap is telling you.
Start your own first pass. Download HeyTheo, add the names involved, and run the three cues above. Get the app
FAQs
Why does a stock jump when a company is being acquired?
The buyer offers more than the current market price to win control. That extra is the premium, and the target's share price rises toward the offer as soon as it is announced.
Why does the acquiring company's stock often fall?
Its shareholders are paying the premium. They also face new debt or new shares to fund the deal, and the risk that promised savings do not arrive. The larger the bill relative to the buyer, the bigger the reaction tends to be.
Why doesn't the target's stock rise all the way to the offer price?
Because shareholders are paid only when the deal closes, which can take a year or more, and because the deal could fail. The gap pays for the wait and the risk.
What is the difference between a cash deal and a stock deal?
In a cash deal the price is fixed. In a stock deal, target shareholders receive shares of the buyer, so the offer's value rises and falls with the buyer's share price.
How do higher interest rates affect mergers?
They make borrowing to fund a deal more expensive and raise the cost of waiting for it to close. That tends to slow dealmaking and favor buyers with cash or with partners.
Sources
Schneider Electric, PTC, C.H. Robinson, RXO, McKesson, CD&R, Option Care Health, Financial Times, Mergermarket, National Bureau of Economic Research, US Treasury, Euronews, FreightWaves
Disclaimer
Disclaimer: HeyTheo is a research and education platform, not an investment adviser or broker-dealer. Nothing here is advice to buy, sell, or hold any security. You trade through your own broker; HeyTheo helps you decide. Backtested results are hypothetical and do not guarantee future returns. References to governments, officials, or policies are for market context only and are not political endorsements. All investing involves risk, including loss of principal. Data is as of the dates noted.