France's Saint-Gobain to buy Building Products of Canada

(Reuters) -French construction materials company Saint-Gobain has agreed to buy Building Products of Canada Corp for about 925 million euros ($994 million), it said on Monday.

Saint-Gobain said it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the privately-owned Canadian maker of roofing shingles and insulation panels. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.

Saint-Gobain, which employs roughly 170,000 people around the world, is expanding its foothold in North America, having also acquired Canada's Kaycan and GCP Applied Technologies in the United States.

Building Products of Canada has some 460 employees and three manufacturing plants in Montreal, Edmonton and Pong-Rouge, where it produces roof shingles and insulation panels among other construction products.

Saint-Gobain's CEO, Benoit Bazin, said in a statement that the acquisition will allow Saint-Gobain to become a leader for roofing in Canada and will complement its existing operations there and in the U.S.

The deal will create value by year three after the transaction closes and will be earnings-per-share accretive from year one, the group said in a statement, adding it estimates synergy opportunities of around C$50 million ($37.37 million) by the third year after the deal's closure.

RBC Capital Markets is acting as Saint-Gobain's financial adviser, with Deloitte Corporate Finance Inc. advising Building Products of Canada.

($1 = 0.9306 euro)

($1 = 1.3379 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Olivier Sorgho; Editing by David Goodman, Conor Humphries and Leslie Adler)