Illinois Tool Works Inc.
ITWHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYIllinois Tool Works Inc. reads as an High Velocity (composite 70/100); Programmatic Roll-Up deploying $237M across 3 disclosed transactions, down 68% vs the prior cycle · primary market Machinery & Automation.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$237M
vs $731M in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
3
3/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Programmatic Roll-Up
High recurring acquisition cadence, usually with many smaller targets.
Composite score
70
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
- $1.4B disclosed buyer spend
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 33d
- 234 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 5 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 5 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 5 activism filings
- Latest activism 18y ago; heavily discounted
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 5 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
- 1 non-reliance 8-K
- 1 auditor change
- Latest event 15y ago; heavily discounted
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 234 8-Ks
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $81.6B
- 10-Q 33d ago
- 3 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($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: $731M · Peak count: 2
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 1 | $120M | $120M | N/A |
| 2024 | 2 | $115M | $58M | N/A |
| 2023 | N/A | $2M | N/A | N/A |
| 2022 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2021 | 1 | $731M | $731M | 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
- Bolt On50%
- Geographic Expansion50%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- bolt_on
- platform
- geographic_expansion
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“Going forward, the Company will emphasize organic growth, while acquisitions will be targeted to bolt-on acquisitions that support and accelerate organic growth in existing segments, and new platforms that expand the Company’s long-term growth and earnings potential.”
“the Company will explore opportunities to reinforce or further expand the long-term organic growth potential of ITW through the addition of selective high-quality acquisitions”
“On July 1, 2003, the Company adopted FASB Interpretation No. 46, Consolidation of Variable Interest Entities (“FIN 46”) relative to its investments in the mortgage entities.”
“The Company has historically acquired businesses with complementary products and services as well as larger acquisitions that represent potential new platforms.”
“such as the acquisition of the Test & Simulation business of MTS Systems Corporation”
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
ITW trades at a +0.0-turn premium to the Machinery & Automation peer median of 17.6×.
- EV / Revenue
- 5.0×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 0.4×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 17.6×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-10
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AMETEK, Inc.AME | 24.3× | 7.2× | 0.3× | $7.6B | $3.3B |
| 21.5× | 3.1× | 5.3× | $4.3B | $8.7B | |
| 17.6× | 5.0× | 1.1× | $18.3B | $9.1B | |
Illinois Tool Works Inc.ITW | 17.6× | 5.0× | 0.4× | $16.2B | $237M |
DOVER CorpDOV | 17.5× | 3.8× | 1.3× | $8.3B | $1.8B |
| 15.8× | 3.1× | -0.3× | $6B | $5.1B | |
| 13.8× | 5.5× | 3.1× | $8.1B | $8.1B |
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)352026-02-13
- 10-Q (quarterly)1002026-05-07
- 8-K (event)2342026-04-30
- Proxy / DEF 14A552026-03-27
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)52008-04-03
Signals on file
- critical
Non-reliance disclosure
2011-08-301 Item 4.02 filing on file; financial-statement non-reliance.
- elevated
Auditor change
2011-08-301 Item 4.01 filing on file; certifying accountant change.
- elevated
Activism on file
2008-04-035 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.