Q2 Electrical Acquisitions … a Busy Quarter

Looking back over last quarter there were a number of acquisitions in the electrical / lighting industry.  Reasons for the deals can be based upon:

• A desire for accelerated growth
• Expansion into geographic markets
• Desire to leverage infrastructure and/or support costs to improve profits and expand into new markets
• Increase the customer base
• Acquire technologies
• Acquisition growth outpaces organic growth
• And some of this may be occurring as companies utilize cash generated from tax benefits or as part of a strategic plan.

Recent industry deals include:

Distributors

• Springfield Electric purchasing the Owensboro branch of Hannan Supply
• Springfield also purchased Valley Electric and this followed their acquisition of Tri-State Lighting & Supply in Evansville, IN
• CED closed on their Tri-State Supply deal
• While not an acquisition, the fastest growing distributor in the country, Lonestar Electric, opened a 50,000 square foot branch in Austin, TX with almost 20 people staffing the branch … half in sales. With only 4 locations and no distribution equipment line, company sales exceed $150M in only a few years
• Turtle & Hughes acquired Associated of Los Angeles
• Motion Industries acquired Power Industries in a related field
• BDI-USA acquired Advanced Automated Controls Inc., an electrical systems integration and engineering company based in Lake Ariel, PA.
• City Electric (Syracuse) was sold to Sonepar
• NHP Electrical Engineering Products acquired the Rockwell Automation related business assets from Rexel in the South Pacific.  This is part of Rexel’s efforts to sell non-core assets.
• Lindley Electric was sold to USESI and is part of Yale Electric

Lighting

• Siemens acquired Enlighted, a lighting company that integrates into building automation systems, hence a play on smart lighting and IoT
• Neo Lights Holdings, Inc., a renewable energy technology company developing and manufacturing LED technologies, smart sensors and networking systems, with innovative approaches to off-grid and on grid emergency management networked solutions, acquired Simkar.
• Lutron acquired Ketra (and did you ever think Lutron would make an acquisition? And for someone who may have better technology (otherwise, why buy them?)
• Philips Lighting purchased Shenzhen LiteMagic to expand its business in China

Other Manufacturer Deals

• Power Products sold its global marine and mobile business to Brunswick Corp. The deal also includes Marinco Power Products (wiring devices).  The deal does not include their electrical division which includes Gardner Bender
• Power Products had earlier acquired King Innovation for their electrical group
• Emerson acquired Textron’s Tool & Test division which included Greenlee. $810M deal for a $470M division. What was surprising about this is that at the end of last year / early this year, Emerson sought to pursue Rockwell.  A change in strategy to deploy capital?

Plus there were some rep merger deals announced this quarter including JD Martin and The Schell Company and Condor Associates is now Pollart-Condor Electrical Sales

And we know that there are other distributor discussions occuring and that a number of manufacturers are one the acquisition hunt.

What deals are we missing?