Aecom
ACMHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYAecom reads as an High Velocity (composite 62/100); Consistent Strategic Buyer deploying $231M across 0 disclosed transactions, newly disclosed vs the prior cycle · primary market E&C.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$231M
vs N/A in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
N/A
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
AECOM (ACM) is a public-company acquirer in engineering & construction with $9.3B of disclosed M&A spend across 5 acquisitions over 6 active years. Strategy mix is led by Geographic Expansion (48%), Horizontal Consolidation (24%), Bolt On (16%). Current capacity: $1.0B cash, $2.7B total debt, 1.4x net leverage (conservative). Has $2.1B of incremental debt capacity to a 3.0x IG threshold and $4.6B to the 5.0x HY transition. Disclosed median deal size sits at $1.9B.
- “The purpose of the acquisition was to further diversify the Company's market presence and accelerate the Company's strategy to create an integrated delivery platform for customers.”- 10-K FY2015
- “We have created an integrated delivery platform with superior capabilities to design, build, finance and operate infrastructure assets around the world.”- 10-K FY2018
- “We intend to pursue a balanced capital allocation strategy that includes acquisitions.”- 10-K FY2014
- ▸Entry into adjacent geographies via platform acquisitions
- ▸Bolt-ons into existing geography for route density
- ▸Room for a $4.6B 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
- $5.7B disclosed buyer spend
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- 40 acquisition-history signals
- 228 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 6 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 3 spin pre-registrations
- Latest event 19y ago; heavily discounted
- 6 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 6 activism filings
- Latest activism 1.7y ago
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 6 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 228 8-Ks
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $13B
- 10-Q 105d ago
- 3 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($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: $213M · Peak count: 1
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | N/A | $213M | N/A | N/A |
| 2024 | N/A | $19M | N/A | N/A |
| 2023 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 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 Expansion25%
- Horizontal Consolidation25%
- Bolt On25%
- Platform25%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- geographic_expansion
- horizontal_consolidation
- bolt_on
- platform
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“The purpose of the acquisition was to further diversify the Company's market presence and accelerate the Company's strategy to create an integrated delivery platform for customers.”
“Our business strategy focuses on leveraging our competitive strengths, leadership positions in our core markets, and client relationships across all major geographies.”
“We have created an integrated delivery platform with superior capabilities to design, build, finance and operate infrastructure assets around the world.”
“We believe that the trend towards consolidation in our industry will continue to produce candidates that align with our acquisition strategy.”
“By integrating and providing a broad range of services, we believe we deliver maximum value to our clients at competitive costs.”
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
ACM trades at a -8.9-turn discount to the E&C peer median of 19.2×.
- EV / Revenue
- 0.8×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 1.4×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 19.2×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-10
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 46.8× | 3.8× | 2.0× | $30B | $5.4B | |
| 20.0× | 2.3× | -0.3× | $17.8B | $1.3B | |
| 19.2× | 1.3× | 3.0× | $13.2B | $32M | |
Stantec Inc.STN | 15.3× | 2.2× | N/A | $7.6B | N/A |
AecomACM | 10.3× | 0.8× | 1.4× | $16B | $231M |
KBR, Inc.KBR | 7.1× | 0.9× | 2.4× | $7.7B | $829M |
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)232025-11-19
- 10-Q (quarterly)582026-02-10
- 8-K (event)2282026-03-10
- Proxy / DEF 14A302026-01-20
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)62024-09-27
Signals on file
- elevated
Spin registration
2007-07-033 Form 10-12 filings on file; pre-spin registration.
- elevated
Activism on file
2024-09-276 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- 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.