Pentair plc
PNRHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYPentair plc reads as an High Velocity (composite 78/100); Consistent Strategic Buyer deploying $401M across 3 disclosed transactions, down 80% vs the prior cycle · primary market Machinery & Automation, ranked #9 on disclosed spend.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$401M
vs $2B in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
3
3/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Consistent Strategic Buyer
Meaningful spend appears across repeat years.
Composite score
78
High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity
Pentair (PNR) is a public-company acquirer in industrial - machinery with $6.3B of disclosed M&A spend across 17 acquisitions over 17 active years. Strategy mix is led by Geographic Expansion (44%), Bolt On (22%), Horizontal Consolidation (15%). Current capacity: $68M cash, $1.9B total debt, 2.0x net leverage (conservative). Has $980M of incremental debt capacity to a 3.0x IG threshold and $2.9B to the 5.0x HY transition. Disclosed median deal size sits at $369M.
- “In February 2019, as part of Filtration Solutions, we completed the acquisitions of Aquion and Pelican for $163.4 million and $121.1 million, respectively, in cash, net of cash acquired.”- 10-K FY2019
- “savings generated from back-office consolidation, reduction in personnel and other lean initiatives”- 10-K FY2017
- “We compete based on technical expertise, intellectual property, reputation for quality and reliability, timeliness of delivery, previous installation history, contractual terms, service offerings, customer experience and service and price.”- 10-K FY2025
- ▸Entry into adjacent geographies via platform acquisitions
- ▸Bolt-ons into existing geography for route density
- ▸Room for a $2.9B 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
- $6.6B disclosed buyer spend
- Filed within 20d
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 20d
- 23 acquisition-history signals
- 298 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 15 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 15 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 15 activism filings
- Latest activism 7.5y ago; heavily discounted
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 15 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 298 8-Ks
- Filed within 20d
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $14.3B
- 10-Q 28d ago
- 2 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($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: $1,581M · Peak count: 2
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2 | $292M | $146M | N/A |
| 2024 | 1 | $108M | $108M | N/A |
| 2023 | N/A | $600K | N/A | N/A |
| 2022 | 1 | $1.6B | $1.6B | N/A |
| 2021 | 2 | $339M | $169M | N/A |
| 2020 | N/A | $58M | 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 Expansion33%
- Horizontal Consolidation33%
- Bolt On33%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- geographic_expansion
- bolt_on
- horizontal_consolidation
- platform
- tuck_in
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“We compete based on technical expertise, intellectual property, reputation for quality and reliability, timeliness of delivery, previous installation history, contractual terms, service offerings, customer experience and service and price.”
“In February 2019, as part of Filtration Solutions, we completed the acquisitions of Aquion and Pelican for $163.4 million and $121.1 million, respectively, in cash, net of cash acquired.”
“cost savings generated from back-office consolidation, reduction in personnel and other lean initiatives”
“savings generated from back-office consolidation, reduction in personnel and other lean initiatives”
“The markets for our products and services are geographically diverse and highly competitive.”
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
- #9 of 126
- Share of market capital
- 1.9%
Valuation positioning
PNR trades at a -0.6-turn discount to the Machinery & Automation peer median of 15.6×.
- EV / Revenue
- 3.4×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 2.0×
- 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 | |
| 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)322026-02-24
- 10-Q (quarterly)992026-04-28
- 8-K (event)2982026-05-06
- Proxy / DEF 14A662026-03-20
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)152018-12-07
Signals on file
- elevated
Activism on file
2018-12-0715 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.