Manufacturing Business News: SPX Technologies Buying Crawford United
The leaders of multinational holding company SPX Technologies Inc. have agreed to pay about $300 million for Cleveland-based Crawford United Corp. to beef up SPX’s commercial air handling offerings.
Crawford’s air handling group designs, builds and installs customized HVAC systems with its Akron-based Air Enterprises subsidiary as well as HVAC coils via its Rahn Industries unit, which it acquired in January for about $13 million. Combined, those businesses generated about $82 million in sales and nearly $23 million in operating profits over the past 12 months.
“We are excited to welcome the Crawford United team,” Gene Lowe, SPX’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “Their commercial air-handling business is an excellent fit for our HVAC platform, strengthening our ability to deliver end-to-end solutions to customers in healthcare, universities, pharmaceutical, advanced manufacturing and commercial markets.”
Lowe and his Charlotte-based team plan to sell the rest of Crawford United’s operations, a basket of 11 specialty manufacturing companies that makes precision components, coatings, hoses and more for a range of end markets. Those companies include brands such as Knitting Machinery Co. of America and Advanced Industrial Coatings and collectively booked about $93 million in sales in the 12 months that ended Sept. 30.
SPX is home to about 4,300 people in 16 countries. In the first nine months of this year, the company generated an adjusted operating profit of $345 million on revenues of more than $1.6 billion. The company’s HVAC-related business accounts for two-thirds of its top line.
Canada’s minister of industry last week said the government will send notice to Stellantis NV that it considers the automotive giant to be in default of contracts related to federal support it received to continue making vehicles at two Ontario factories.
Stellantis officials say they haven’t breached the terms of the roughly $160 million in government incentives they have received in recent years and say they ‘re looking for new uses for the Brampton plant. They also point to the adding back of a third shift at the company’s Windsor plant near Detroit as a sign of their commitment to manufacturing in Canada.
For more on the situation—including some back and forth about redactions made recently to sections of the parts’ investment agreement—check out this CBC story.
The mission creep has been reversed.
Stanley Black & Decker Inc. executives have for several years been clear about investing most of the company’s time and money on Dewalt, Stanley and Craftsman, which they consider their core brands. And CFO Pat Hallinan told last week’s Goldman Sachs Industrials and Materials Conference that they will be, “for the near to medium term, myopically and aggressively focused on organic growth and margin expansion as opposed to M&A.”
That leaves a handful of other brands in Stanley Black & Decker’s portfolio—think Lennox, Irwin, Mac Tools and the latter two-thirds of the company’s name—to fend for themselves, Hallinan said. The question for those teams, he said, is about treading water with “very few degrees of freedom” and little in the way of resources and attention. The path forward is focus—and that includes undoing some recent initiatives.
“There were some brands we bought and we stretched too wide,” Hallinan told Goldman analyst Joe Ritchie. “It wasn’t sustainable for either of us […] Lennox, which has long been a cutting tools brand, we started making Lennox screwdrivers and tape measures. And we did the same with Irwin, which used to be a woodworking brand […] We’ve gone back and we’ve refocused those brands on where their core strengths are greatest.”
The emphasis on lean and mean is how Stanley Black & Decker will generate value from this brand portfolio, Hallinan added: “We probably couldn’t get paid enough relative to the value of focusing them.”
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has been in business journalism since the mid-1990s and writes about public companies, markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications, focusing on IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal, T&D World and Healthcare Innovation. He also curates the twice-monthly Market Moves Strategy newsletter that showcases Endeavor stories on strategy, leadership and investment and contributes to other Market Moves newsletters.
With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati in 1997, initially covering retail and the courts before shifting to banking, insurance and investing. He later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal before being named editor of the Nashville Post in early 2008. He led a team that helped grow the Post's online traffic more than fivefold before joining Endeavor in September 2021.