Kadant Inc.
KAIHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYKadant Inc. reads as High Velocity (composite 70/100); pressure / disclosure signals dominate the posture this cycle · primary market Machinery & Automation.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$491M
vs $151M in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
9
3/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Consistent Strategic Buyer
Meaningful spend appears across repeat years.
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
- $2.5B disclosed buyer spend
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 35d
- 239 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 3 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 3 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 3 activism filings
- Latest activism 26y ago; heavily discounted
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 10-Q 216d stale
- 3 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 239 8-Ks
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $4.2B
- 10-Q 216d ago
- 2 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($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: $300M · Peak count: 6
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2 | $190M | $95M | N/A |
| 2024 | 6 | $300M | $50M | N/A |
| 2023 | 1 | $900K | $900K | N/A |
| 2022 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2021 | N/A | $144M | N/A | N/A |
| 2020 | N/A | $7M | 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 Expansion20%
- Bolt On20%
- Horizontal Consolidation20%
- Technology Acquisition20%
- Platform20%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- geographic_expansion
- bolt_on
- horizontal_consolidation
- technology_acquisition
- platform
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“We expect that a significant driver of our growth over the next several years will be the acquisition of businesses and technologies that complement or augment our existing products and services or may involve entry into a new process industry.”
“We expect that a significant driver of our long-term growth will be the acquisition of businesses and technologies that complement or augment our existing products and services or may involve entry into a new process industry.”
“Implementing our acquisition strategy involves risks, and our failure to successfully implement this strategy could have a material adverse effect on our business.”
“We completed acquisitions in each of our three reportable segments in 2024 and continue to pursue acquisition opportunities.”
“We continue to pursue acquisition opportunities.”
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
KAI trades at a +0.8-turn premium to the Machinery & Automation peer median of 17.6×.
- EV / Revenue
- 3.9×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- -0.5×
- 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 | |
Kadant Inc.KAI | 18.4× | 3.9× | -0.5× | $1.1B | $491M |
| 17.6× | 5.0× | 1.1× | $18.3B | $9.1B | |
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.
Buyer landscape.
Public buyers whose stated archetypes, target categories, and recent cadence align with this issuer as a plausible acquisition target. Scores cross EDGAR signal and disclosure overlap.
Likely buyers
No public buyers surface as a strong target-side fit on current signal.
Likely sellers / divestiture partners
No reciprocal divestiture / strategic-alternatives matches identified.
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)322026-03-03
- 10-Q (quarterly)902025-11-05
- 8-K (event)2392026-05-05
- Proxy / DEF 14A532026-04-01
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)32000-02-01
Signals on file
- elevated
Activism on file
2000-02-013 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- info
Signal
Serial acquisition history
- 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.