ACCO Brands to Buy Trust for $57 Million, Expanding Technology-Peripherals Business

ACCO Brands has agreed to acquire GXT Holding B.V. and its subsidiaries, known as Trust, in a transaction valued at about $57 million, adding another computer and gaming accessories business as the company shifts more of its portfolio toward technology peripherals.

Trust generates about $100 million in annual revenue and sells keyboards, mice, headsets, speakers, webcams, chargers and gaming products across Europe and Latin America. ACCO said the acquisition would take its technology-peripherals categories to roughly $500 million in annual sales on a pro-forma basis, making the deal more strategically important than its relatively small headline value might suggest.

The Form 8-K filed by ACCO Brands lists August 14 as the date of the agreement and says the company entered into a definitive agreement to buy Trust from Egeria, a pan-European investment firm. The transaction is expected to close in the late third quarter or early fourth quarter of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions, including approvals from applicable competition authorities.

Trust adds scale to ACCO’s technology-peripherals push

ACCO’s rationale centers on expanding categories that management believes offer better growth prospects than some of its traditional office and school-supplies businesses. Trust, founded in 1983 and headquartered in the Netherlands, operates an asset-light model with outsourced manufacturing and sells through retailers, e-commerce platforms and business-to-business channels.

The acquisition would place Trust alongside Kensington, PowerA and EPOS in ACCO’s technology-peripherals portfolio. The company said Trust’s presence in PC accessories, gaming, smart-home products and mobile accessories broadens the range of products it can sell through its existing European platform and gives ACCO more scale in markets where it is already active.

ACCO President and CEO Tom Tedford described the transaction as part of the company’s continuing move toward faster-growing technology categories. The key number for investors is the projected portfolio size after the deal: ACCO says its technology-peripherals categories would approach $500 million in annual pro-forma sales once Trust is included.

That figure should be treated as a company projection rather than a new reported revenue segment. Trust itself contributes roughly $100 million in annual revenue, while the $500 million figure represents ACCO’s estimate for the broader technology-peripherals business on a combined basis. The transaction does not create $500 million of new revenue by itself.

ACCO expects synergies and modest earnings accretion

ACCO expects Trust to be modestly accretive to adjusted earnings per share during the first 12 months after closing. It also expects to realize approximately $5 million to $8 million in cost synergies within 18 months, largely as Trust is integrated into ACCO’s existing European operations.

Those benefits are forward-looking and depend on the deal closing and the integration proceeding as planned. ACCO’s filing specifically warns that regulatory approvals, operating disruption, integration costs and the ability to achieve anticipated synergies could affect the eventual outcome.

The company plans to finance the transaction with borrowings under its revolving credit facility and says the acquisition should have only a limited effect on pro-forma leverage. ACCO’s latest quarterly filing shows why that financing choice matters. As of June 30, the company had $251.6 million outstanding under a $467.5 million multi-currency revolving facility and $204.8 million of additional borrowing capacity after letters of credit. Its consolidated leverage ratio stood at 4.30 times, compared with a maximum covenant of 4.75 times for the first and second quarters of 2026.

The $57 million transaction value is modest relative to ACCO’s overall debt load, but the use of additional borrowing means investors will still have to weigh the promised growth and savings against the company’s balance-sheet position. ACCO has said its priorities include debt reduction as well as strategic acquisitions, dividends and share repurchases.

The deal follows ACCO’s recent EPOS acquisition

Trust is the second technology-peripherals acquisition ACCO has pursued in less than a year. The company agreed in December 2025 to acquire EPOS, a Danish enterprise-audio business, and completed that acquisition in January 2026. ACCO said at the time that EPOS would expand its Kensington computer-accessories portfolio into premium enterprise headsets.

The contribution from EPOS was already visible in ACCO’s latest results. In its second-quarter earnings release, ACCO reported net sales of $415.1 million, up 5.1% from a year earlier. The EPOS acquisition contributed 5.7 percentage points to that growth, while comparable sales declined 2.3% as softness in international markets and technology peripherals offset strength elsewhere.

For the first six months of 2026, EPOS added $37.6 million to sales, or 5.3 percentage points of reported growth. Comparable sales were down 2.5% over the same period. That contrast helps explain the strategic role of acquisitions such as EPOS and Trust: ACCO is using purchased businesses to build scale in technology categories even as organic demand has remained uneven.

Management said in July that the EPOS integration was on track and that it was in the early stages of expanding the brand across ACCO’s global platform. Trust would add another European business to that effort, with a larger annual revenue base than EPOS and exposure to both consumer and gaming accessories.

The deal still has to clear its closing conditions. Until then, the roughly $500 million pro-forma technology-peripherals figure, the expected earnings accretion and the $5 million to $8 million synergy target remain management estimates rather than realized results. The next concrete milestone is the expected closing window in late Q3 or early Q4 of 2026, assuming the required competition approvals are obtained.