Woodward, Inc.
WWDHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYWoodward, Inc. reads as an High Velocity (composite 78/100); Consistent Strategic Buyer deploying $48M across 2 disclosed transactions, down 71% vs the prior cycle · primary market A&D Components.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$48M
vs $167M in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
2
2/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Consistent Strategic Buyer
Meaningful spend appears across repeat years.
Composite score
78
High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity
Behavioral posture, nine reads.
Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.
Active Acquirer
Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A
- $2.5B disclosed buyer spend
- Filed within 26d
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 26d
- 299 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 3 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 3 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 3 activism filings
- Latest activism 24y ago; heavily discounted
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 3 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
- 1 auditor change
- 1 NT late filing
- Latest event 6.8y ago; heavily discounted
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 299 8-Ks
- Filed within 26d
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $22.7B
- 10-Q 26d ago
- 3 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.
Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $771M · Peak count: 1
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 1 | $42M | $42M | N/A |
| 2024 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2023 | 1 | $6M | $6M | N/A |
| 2022 | 1 | $167M | $167M | N/A |
| 2021 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2020 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Strategy posture.
The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.
Archetype mix
- Geographic Expansion25%
- Horizontal Consolidation25%
- Bolt On25%
- Technology Acquisition25%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- geographic_expansion
- horizontal_consolidation
- bolt_on
- technology_acquisition
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“We face intense competition from a number of established competitors in the United States and abroad, some of which are larger in size or are divisions of large, diversified companies with substantially greater financial resources.”
“In January 2016, Woodward and General Electric Company (“GE”), acting through its GE Aviation business unit, consummated the formation of a strategic joint venture between Woodward and GE (the “JV”).”
“Industry consolidation trends could reduce our sales opportunities, decrease sales prices, and drive down demand for our products.”
“consolidation in the aircraft engine market is increasingly prevalent, resulting in fewer engine manufacturers”
“Changes in competitive conditions, including the availability of new technologies, products and services, the introduction of new channels of distribution, changes in OEM and aftermarket pricing, and further consolidation of companies in our industries, could impact our relationships with our customers and may adversely affect future sales and margins”
Market context.
Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.
Primary market
A&D Components
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $32.8B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $12.9B
- Recent vs prior
- +153%
- Issuer rank in market
- N/A
- Share of market capital
- 0.0%
Valuation positioning
WWD trades at a +5.5-turn premium to the A&D Components peer median of 24.6×.
- EV / Revenue
- 5.7×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 0.2×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 24.6×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-10
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 34.2× | 9.3× | 1.8× | $4.6B | $3.3B | |
| 31.5× | 2.4× | -0.9× | $92.2B | $1.4B | |
Woodward, Inc.WWD | 30.1× | 5.7× | 0.2× | $4B | $48M |
| 29.1× | 6.6× | -0.8× | $48.4B | N/A | |
| 20.1× | 10.1× | 5.7× | $9.5B | $3.5B | |
| 19.5× | 3.0× | 1.9× | $90.4B | N/A | |
| 16.0× | 2.6× | -0.1× | $22.5B | $13.4B |
Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in A&D Components. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.
Target landscape.
Public-issuer targets that fit this buyer's archetype and target categories from filing-derived signal. Scores reflect cross-signal fit; reasons cite the EDGAR-anchored facts that drove the match.
No qualifying public-issuer targets surfaced from the current signal mix.
Stated target categories
No target categories enumerated in the audited corpus for this issuer.
Filing activity & signal stream.
Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.
Filing cadence
- 10-K (annual)332025-11-25
- 10-Q (quarterly)1002026-04-30
- 8-K (event)2992026-04-29
- Proxy / DEF 14A382025-12-12
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)32002-11-14
Signals on file
- elevated
Auditor change
2007-12-111 Item 4.01 filing on file; certifying accountant change.
- watch
Late-filing notice
2019-08-121 NT 10-K/10-Q filing on file.
- elevated
Activism on file
2002-11-143 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- info
Signal
Serial acquisition history
- info
Signal
10-K strategy themes
- info
Signal
Restatement risk
Audited corpus.
No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.
This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.