Jumping in after the American 4th of July holiday and during an exciting World Cup, we have a big update. We also have updated our format a bit to make the newsletter easier to read. Feedback welcome.
Before we get to the issue, another item of note: Late last week, our friends at Building Ventures published a thoughtful piece on the gap between finding waste in building and actually addressing it. This indirectly focused on Noda, a recent investment for the firm. Building Ventures notes that agentic AI will address this - our view is that there’s been more activity connecting this workflow than some might realize. Regardless, a number of the key themes in the write up echoed points we’ve made here. We shared some quick thoughts on Linkedin, and will share more thoughts in a subsequent issue.
Albireo Energy acquired PASCO, an integrator based in upstate New York which represents Alerton (Honeywell) and Distech Controls (Acuity). It’s part of a typical PE-backed rollup of local and regional branches. See the acquisition section below for more details.
Aamidor Consulting lens: We’ve seen far more HVAC-focused rollups compared to controls-first firms; but Albireo is a leading example of the latter. This acquisition announcement notes that Pasco will have access to Albireo Energy’s remote operations center, and Albireo also has been a market-forward on master systems integration (MSI) services, which makes sense. Albireo represents all major controls OEMs, but only in specific regions. MSI capabilities can form the basis of the connectivity for a client that has controls from one OEM in one location, and another OEM in another location. This rollup model does not completely solve a customer’s issues in this circumstance, but MSI services do help.
Market activity is only useful if it improves a decision. Need this analysis applied to your market, product roadmap, M&A pipeline, partner strategy, or investment thesis?
Aamidor Consulting helps smart building and Building OpTech companies, investors, and incumbents pressure-test go to market strategy, de-risk investments and acquisitions, and validate product investments.
Paid subscribers get the full digest: every relevant acquisition, funding round, partnership, product launch, and market signal.
In this issue, the complete, un-redacted view of market developments in the ecosystem includes:
M&A & Consolidation: 7 acquisitions in this issue
Partnership Announcements: 7 relevant announcements
Public firm news: Announcements from 4 industry incumbents covered
Total Ecosystem Moves Tracked This Issue: 18 signals
We’ve updated our market analysis and Deal Desk section below. This issue focuses on the new, focused Honeywell Technologies in our first new-format issue.
The Catalyst: Honeywell Technologies launched, which is the remaining industrial and building automation unit. The firm held an investor day presentation that provided more insight on market opportunity and future plans.
The Market Impact: The “new” Honeywell is more focused on our specific industry, which likely means greater product investment, more M+A, and potentially more early-stage investing. We focus on all of these, below.
The Premium Verdict: Paid subscribers also have our insight on what this means to the industry more generally, especially innovators that focus on sitting on top of controls products. We also touch on Honeywell’s TAM estimates and some of the key questions facing the firm.
Honeywell recently held an investor day for Honeywell Technologies, the new name of the remaining part of the business which includes building automation and industrial automation (which includes process technologies). This is a more focused business, and the related moves - spinning off advanced materials (now called Solstice) and aerospace (now called Honeywell Aerospace) is similar to what peers have done, such as Carrier and Trane (pure play HVAC with some building controls) and JCI (pure-play HVAC and building controls to larger and more complex buildings).
The recent presentation and slide deck provides significantly more detail on Honeywell’s market position and future direction than their quarterly earnings calls. We’re sharing the key points from the deck and references during the call. Overall, there are a number of real differentiators that Honeywell is bringing to the market, though their opportunity in the market is similar to peers.
And, this split is not so surprising. In fact, it is par for the course in our industry, and one in a long line of firms becoming more focused, We continue to track these moves, and the latest edition of our de-conglomeration tracker is included below:
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.