Opinion by Mathew Carr
Intertek is worth 10 times revenue, £30b vs £10.6b being offered by EQT.
It’s time competition regulators in the UK protected its future national champions from takeover.
Intertek’s carbon credits business is probably worth £30b by itself.
Think outside of your box, folks.
Trump, who has demonised carbon, is temporary.
If Alphabet is worth 10 times revenue….Intertek certainly is.
Undervalued? Claude AI unchecked
Yes, that’s a legitimate argument — and it’s actually being made right now. A few things worth knowing:
First, the company is Intertek (not “Intertech”) — a FTSE 100 testing, inspection, and certification giant headquartered in London.
Swedish private equity group EQT made a bid worth around $11 billion which Intertek rejected in April 2026.
EQT has since submitted what it calls a “final” £10.6 billion all-cash offer, with several large institutional shareholders now publicly urging the board to engage.
The undervaluation argument has real substance. Intertek’s board has been hesitating partly because it believes the offer doesn’t fully reflect the company’s strategic value and long-term growth potential, particularly in high-demand areas like sustainability testing.
On the carbon credits angle specifically: Intertek offers validation and verification services that help projects meet eligibility criteria for verified carbon credits, enabling access to voluntary carbon markets.
That positions them directly in the verification infrastructure of a market that is expanding fast — the voluntary carbon market reached $2.52 billion in value in 2025 and is projected to grow to $100–250 billion by 2030.
So the bull case for undervaluation broadly runs: testing and assurance is becoming more critical as regulatory complexity grows (sustainability reporting, supply chain auditing, emissions verification), not less — and the current offer price may not be pricing in that secular growth.
Whether EQT’s £10.6bn reflects fair value is genuinely contested, which is exactly why the board is resisting.