On August 15, 2011 Spectris PLC announced the acquisition of Omega Engineering for about $475 million, a multiple of more than 2.8 x 2010 revenues of $168 million. I remember seeing the large and colorful Omega product catalogs in the office when I started here at VDC over 14 years ago.
As I recall Omega seemed to sell just about everything under the sun when it came to process measurement and control instrumentation including temperature, pressure, flow, level, humidity, strain and force; HMI, electric heaters and data acquisition products and software. Omega Engineering enjoys a strong brand name, enjoys high levels of repeat business, some customization capability and a reputation for providing quality customer service.
Omega Engineering will serve as an additional growth platform from which their Industrial Controls business, which is already comprised of Red Lion Controls and Microscan, will continue to expand its presence regionally as well as from a product platform basis. Spectris had already acquired N-TRON back in Q4 2010 as a means of expanding its footprint in network connectivity and to further leverage the company's industrial controls and test & measurement businesses.
No doubt Spectris will likely leverage the synergies afforded via the combined products and channel networks of Red Lion Controls and N-TRON along with the new product additions via the Omega acquisition to grow its presence in the process measurement and instrumentation, test & measurement, academic and even in-line instrumentation market segments. Omega enjoyed a wide base of customers that relied on the company's one-stop shop product portfolio to handle their small-scale project needs.
VDC believes the greatest value from this acquisition will come from being able to leverage a diverse product portfolio of products to gain traction with new customers with larger project requirements that prefer to deal with a supplier than can provide all their product and service requirements.
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