Advanced Drainage Systems, Inc.
WMSHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYAdvanced Drainage Systems, Inc. reads as an High Velocity (composite 62/100); Consistent Strategic Buyer deploying $285M across 2 disclosed transactions, down 76% vs the prior cycle · primary market E&C.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$285M
vs $1.2B 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
62
High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity
Advanced Drainage Systems (WMS) is a public-company acquirer in construction with $2M of disclosed M&A spend across 6 acquisitions over 6 active years. Strategy mix is led by Geographic Expansion (67%), Bolt On (33%). Current capacity: $1.0B cash, $1.3B total debt, 0.3x net leverage (underlevered). Has $2.4B of incremental debt capacity to a 3.0x IG threshold and $4.2B to the 5.0x HY transition. Disclosed median deal size sits at $300000.
- “In many markets in which we operate there are no significant entry barriers that would prevent new competitors from entering the market, especially on the local level, or existing competitors from expanding in the market.”- 10-K FY2021
- “Consolidation by industry participants could result in competitors with increased market share, larger customer bases, greater diversified product offerings and greater technological and marketing expertise.”- 10-K FY2020
- “The acquisition further strengthens our position in Canada by increasing our size and scale in the market”- 10-K FY2015
- ▸Insufficient strategy signal in filings to draft a next-move thesis.
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
- $1.5B disclosed buyer spend
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- 10 acquisition-history signals
- 162 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 11 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 11 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 11 activism filings
- Latest activism 3.7y ago; discounted
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 11 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 162 8-Ks
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $11.6B
- 10-Q 110d ago
- 2 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($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: $1,147M · Peak count: 1
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 1 | $237M | $237M | N/A |
| 2024 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2023 | 1 | $48M | $48M | N/A |
| 2022 | 1 | $49M | $49M | N/A |
| 2021 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2020 | 1 | $1.1B | $1.1B | 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 Expansion50%
- Bolt On50%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- geographic_expansion
- bolt_on
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“In addition, consolidation by industry participants could result in competitors with increased market share, larger customer bases, greater diversified product offerings and greater technological and marketing expertise, which would allow them to compete more effectively against us.”
“On July 17, 2015, we acquired an additional 10% of the issued and outstanding membership interests in BaySaver Technologies, LLC (“BaySaver”) for a purchase price of $3.2 million, subject to certain additional post-closing purchase price payments specified in the Purchase Agreement.”
“In many markets in which we operate there are no significant entry barriers that would prevent new competitors from entering the market, especially on the local level, or existing competitors from expanding in the market.”
“Consolidation by industry participants could result in competitors with increased market share, larger customer bases, greater diversified product offerings and greater technological and marketing expertise.”
“Certain of our competitors have financial and other resources that are greater than ours and may be better able to withstand price competition, especially with respect to traditional products.”
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
E&C
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $50.9B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $33.3B
- Recent vs prior
- +53%
- Issuer rank in market
- N/A
- Share of market capital
- 0.0%
Valuation positioning
WMS trades at a -2.7-turn discount to the E&C peer median of 15.6×.
- EV / Revenue
- 3.9×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 0.3×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 15.6×
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 | |
Advanced Drainage Systems, Inc.WMS | 13.0× | 3.9× | 0.3× | $3B | $285M |
Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in E&C. 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)122025-05-15
- 10-Q (quarterly)422026-02-05
- 8-K (event)1622026-02-27
- Proxy / DEF 14A212025-06-04
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)112022-09-09
Signals on file
- elevated
Activism on file
2022-09-0911 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- info
Signal
Disclosed acquisition spend
- info
Signal
10-K strategy themes
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.