Schneider Electric to buy Shelly Group for €1.2bn

Shelly Group has agreed to be taken over by Schneider Electric in a deal that values the Bulgarian smart-home company at about €1.2 billion. The Sofia-based firm said on 24 September that it had entered an investment agreement with SE 2026 A SAS, an indirectly wholly-owned subsidiary of Schneider Electric SE, setting out the terms on which it would support a voluntary public tender offer for all of its outstanding shares.

A cash offer at €70 a share

Schneider Electric intends to offer €70.00 in cash for every Shelly Group share. At that price the company is valued at roughly €1.2 billion, a premium of 27% to the unaffected reference price of 28 July 2026 and 22% to the reference price of 23 September 2026.

The offer carries a minimum acceptance threshold that would leave the bidder holding at least 95% of Shelly Group's share capital, and it remains subject to the usual regulatory clearances. Should it succeed, Schneider Electric intends to take steps towards full ownership and a possible delisting. Shelly Group expects the bidder to register the offer with Bulgaria's Financial Supervision Commission within three business days, with clearance expected at the end of November or the start of December 2026 and completion in the first quarter of 2027.

Shelly's founders are backing the deal

The company's two founding shareholders hold about 57% of its share capital between them, and both support the offer. Dimitar Dimitrov, co-chief executive and holder of roughly 29% of the shares, has committed to tender his holding and to reinvest part of the proceeds alongside Schneider Electric, and he is expected to stay on as co-chief executive alongside Wolfgang Kirsch.

Svetlin Todorov, the co-founder and holder of about 28% of the shares, has agreed to sell the stake he controls directly and through his company Salisto Holdings in two tranches. The first covers 5% of the share capital; the remaining 23% stays subject to merger-control clearance.

What Shelly gets out of it

Shelly has grown from a maker of connected relays and sensors into a software-led platform for home energy management and smart buildings, selling interoperable hardware alongside cloud services and open interfaces. The company argues that Schneider Electric's global reach and energy-management expertise could accelerate that strategy, and the investment agreement promises to keep Shelly's headquarters in Bulgaria, its existing geographical footprint and its organisational structure and workforce, including research and development, engineering, sales and operations, for at least three years after completion.

Dimitar Dimitrov tied the deal to Shelly's listing history. "When we listed the Company on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange in 2016, our ambition was to show that a technology company built in Bulgaria could create products that matter to users around the world," he said. He added that with Schneider Electric as a long-term partner, Shelly can bring its technology to more homes and buildings globally "while retaining the entrepreneurial spirit, product focus and Bulgarian roots that have defined us from the beginning."

Wolfgang Kirsch, the other co-chief executive, said the past five years had turned Shelly "from a fast-growing smart home product business into an international technology and platform company".

Our opinion

Shelly's appeal has always been that it behaves like a European engineering company rather than a platform play: relays, dimmers and sensors that work on the local network and answer to anything from Home Assistant to a phone, with the cloud as an option rather than a requirement. That openness is exactly what a global energy-management group may find hardest to keep. Schneider Electric has promised to preserve Shelly's organisation, footprint and Bulgarian engineering base for three years, which is worth taking at face value while noting that the commitment has an expiry date, and a 95% acceptance threshold points towards a delisting that would end the public reporting Shelly has had since 2016. The more telling signal is the founders' decision to roll part of their proceeds back into the business: the people who built Shelly are betting the platform keeps its own identity inside a far larger company. Whether that holds is a question for 2029, not for the offer document.