What happened

Shares of Varex Imaging (Nasdaq: VREX) jumped about 48% today after Teledyne Technologies (NYSE: TDY) agreed to buy the whole company for $18.90 a share in cash — a deal worth roughly $1.1 billion including Varex's debt and stock awards. Both boards have signed off. The stock closed Friday at $12.41, so the offer is a premium of about 52% to that price (and roughly 88% above where Varex traded near $10 back in late May).

Why it moved

This is the cleanest kind of catalyst: a cash buyout at a fixed price. When an acquirer names a number, the target's stock snaps most of the way toward it almost instantly. Notice it jumped ~48% to around $18.4 — a shade under the $18.90 offer, not all the way to it. That small gap is the merger-arbitrage spread: the deal isn't expected to close until early 2027 and still needs antitrust clearances (a US HSR filing plus likely EU and Asia reviews) and a Varex shareholder vote. The discount is the market pricing in the time and the small chance it breaks.

Is it expensive?

Before the bid, Varex was actually cheap. At Friday's $12.41 it carried a P/E of about 13 (as reported by TradingKey/Yahoo) on a market cap near $777 million — below larger peer GE HealthCare, which trades around a 14–15 P/E. That low multiple on a supplier with a near-monopoly in one niche is exactly why an acquirer pounced. Teledyne's $18.90 lifts the valuation to roughly 21x last year's non-GAAP EPS of $0.90, or about 1.3x sales and ~9x EBITDA — full, but the going rate for a hard-to-replace component maker, not a wild overpay.

The business

Varex, spun out of Varian Medical in 2017, makes the guts of X-ray machines — not the scanners themselves. It runs two segments: Medical (FY25 revenue $593m) and Industrial ($252m), for total FY25 sales of about $845m. Its rare edge: it supplies both the X-ray tube (the source) and the detector (the capture) — and it's one of the only independent, production-ready makers of photon-counting CT detectors, the next-gen tech every big scanner brand is racing to adopt. So this isn't a one-product story; it's a supply-chain chokepoint.

Who it touches

• Teledyne (TDY) — the buyer; Varex folds into its Digital Imaging arm and instantly makes it a must-use supplier to the imaging giants.
• The five OEMs — GE HealthCare, Siemens Healthineers, Philips, Canon Medical and Fujifilm control ~90% of imaging systems and now buy a critical part from a defense-adjacent conglomerate.
• Rival component makers — Canon, Thales, iRay and Vieworks; consolidation reshuffles who OEMs can turn to.
• Other niche suppliers — a fat takeout premium for an unglamorous parts maker puts a spotlight on similar small-caps as targets.

What to watch

The one thing that flips this: the deal breaking. If antitrust regulators balk or Varex holders reject it, the stock loses its buyout floor and slides back toward its pre-bid ~$12. Until then, VREX basically trades as a bet on the deal closing, not on Varex's business. Teledyne has done this before — it swallowed FLIR for ~$8.2bn in 2021 and cleared antitrust in seven countries — which is partly why the market is pricing a high chance of completion.

As of ~12:40 PM ET, Aug 10, 2026. Sources: Teledyne/Varex release (via Yahoo Finance), TradingView News, ts2.tech. For discussion and education only — not investment advice. Verify before acting.