Xylem Inc.
XYLHIGH VELOCITYDEAL MODE DOMINANTXylem Inc. reads as an High Velocity (composite 78/100); Consistent Strategic Buyer deploying $832M across 6 disclosed transactions, newly disclosed vs the prior cycle · primary market Machinery & Automation.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$832M
vs N/A in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
6
3/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Consistent Strategic Buyer
Meaningful spend appears across repeat years.
Composite score
78
High Velocity dominates · Deal Mode Dominant
Xylem (XYL) is a public-company acquirer in industrial - machinery with $1.4B of disclosed M&A spend across 9 acquisitions over 8 active years. Strategy mix is led by Geographic Expansion (44%), Technology Acquisition (22%), Talent Acquisition (15%). Current capacity: $808M cash, $1.9B total debt, 0.6x net leverage (underlevered). Has $4.3B of incremental debt capacity to a 3.0x IG threshold and $7.9B to the 5.0x HY transition. Disclosed median deal size sits at $157M.
- “strengthen innovation and technology through creation of new centers of excellence, a streamlined approach to product development and strategic acquisitions”- 10-K FY2019
- “strategic acquisitions”- 10-K FY2018
- “Our 2011 acquisition of YSI contributed $35 million and continued our expansion in the analytical instrumentation market.”- 10-K FY2011
- ▸Entry into adjacent geographies via platform acquisitions
- ▸Bolt-ons into existing geography for route density
- ▸Room for a $7.9B debt-funded acquisition before HY 5.0x.
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
- $3.5B disclosed buyer spend
- Filed within 28d
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 28d
- 16 acquisition-history signals
- 144 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 6 spin pre-registrations
- Latest event 15y ago; heavily discounted
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 144 8-Ks
- Filed within 28d
- 4 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $28.2B
- 10-Q 28d ago
- 3 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($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: $1,782M · Peak count: 3
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 3 | $163M | $54M | N/A |
| 2024 | 2 | $193M | $97M | N/A |
| 2023 | 1 | $476M | $476M | N/A |
| 2022 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 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 Expansion20%
- Technology Acquisition20%
- Bolt On20%
- Horizontal Consolidation20%
- Talent Acquisition20%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- geographic_expansion
- technology_acquisition
- talent_acquisition
- horizontal_consolidation
- bolt_on
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“strengthen innovation and technology through creation of new centers of excellence, a streamlined approach to product development and strategic acquisitions”
“Completion of the YSI Incorporated (“YSI”) acquisition, which contributed approximately $35 million of revenue to the Water Infrastructure segment results”
“Our 2011 acquisition of YSI contributed $35 million and continued our expansion in the analytical instrumentation market.”
“deploy capital in smart, disciplined ways to develop and acquire solutions to address our customers’ challenges”
“strategic acquisitions”
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
Machinery & Automation
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $92.5B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $69.9B
- Recent vs prior
- +32%
- Issuer rank in market
- N/A
- Share of market capital
- 0.0%
Valuation positioning
XYL trades at a +0.6-turn premium to the Machinery & Automation peer median of 15.0×.
- EV / Revenue
- 3.1×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 0.6×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 15.0×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-10
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ecolab Inc.ECL | 24.5× | 4.9× | 2.3× | $16.5B | $2.1B |
Veralto CorpVLTO | 16.5× | 4.0× | 0.9× | $5.6B | $395M |
Xylem Inc.XYL | 15.6× | 3.1× | 0.6× | $9.1B | $832M |
Pentair plcPNR | 15.0× | 3.4× | 2.0× | $4.2B | $401M |
| 14.9× | 2.2× | 1.4× | $4.7B | $372M | |
| 10.9× | 2.3× | 0.5× | $3.8B | $146M |
Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Machinery & Automation. 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)152026-02-25
- 10-Q (quarterly)452026-04-28
- 8-K (event)1442026-04-28
- Proxy / DEF 14A332026-03-30
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)0N/A
Signals on file
- elevated
Spin registration
2011-10-056 Form 10-12 filings on file; pre-spin registration.
- info
Signal
Disclosed acquisition spend
- info
Signal
10-K strategy themes
- info
Signal
Spin/Carve candidate
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.