Ecolab Inc.
ECLHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYEcolab Inc. reads as an High Velocity (composite 78/100); Platform Builder deploying $2B across 10 disclosed transactions, down 52% vs the prior cycle · primary market Chemicals & Materials, ranked #7 on disclosed spend.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$2.1B
vs $4.4B in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
10
3/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Platform Builder
Large and recent disclosed spend expands platforms or service-line scale.
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
- $12.3B disclosed buyer spend
- Filed within 19d
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 19d
- 58 acquisition-history signals
- 334 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 25 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 25 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 25 activism filings
- Latest activism 3.8y ago; discounted
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 25 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
- 1 auditor change
- Latest event 20y ago; heavily discounted
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 334 8-Ks
- Filed within 19d
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $80.4B
- 10-Q 19d ago
- 3 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($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: $3,924M · Peak count: 5
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2 | $1.6B | $811M | N/A |
| 2024 | 4 | $310M | $77M | N/A |
| 2023 | 4 | $180M | $45M | N/A |
| 2022 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2021 | 4 | $3.9B | $981M | N/A |
| 2020 | 1 | $507M | $507M | 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
- Bolt On25%
- Geographic Expansion25%
- Horizontal Consolidation25%
- Platform25%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- geographic_expansion
- bolt_on
- horizontal_consolidation
- platform
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“Consolidation of our customers and vendors can affect our results: Customers and vendors in the foodservice, hospitality, travel, healthcare and food processing industries have consolidated in recent years and that trend may continue.”
“Anios provides an innovative product line that expands the solutions the Company is able to offer, while also providing a complementary geographic footprint”
“This consolidation could have an adverse impact on our ability to retain customers and on our margins and consolidated results of operations.”
“we continued to invest in and build our business through various acquisitions that complement our strategic vision”
“Purolite is a leading and fast-growing global provider ... highly complementary to our current offering”
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
Chemicals & Materials
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $85.8B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $80.5B
- Recent vs prior
- +7%
- Issuer rank in market
- #7 of 128
- Share of market capital
- 3.8%
Valuation positioning
ECL trades at a +9.5-turn premium to the Chemicals & Materials peer median of 15.0×.
- EV / Revenue
- 4.9×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 2.3×
- 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 Chemicals & Materials. 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)252026-02-23
- 10-Q (quarterly)952026-05-07
- 8-K (event)3342026-04-28
- Proxy / DEF 14A462026-03-20
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)252022-08-22
Signals on file
- elevated
Auditor change
2006-05-091 Item 4.01 filing on file; certifying accountant change.
- elevated
Activism on file
2022-08-2225 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- info
Signal
Disclosed acquisition spend
- 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.