Albany International Corp. [AIN] on Friday said it has completed its $210 million acquisition of Harris Corp.’s [HRS] Aerostructures business in a deal that complements its existing aerospace composites business.
Harris acquired the Aerostructures business as part of its acquisition in 2015 of Exelis. Deal terms included $187 million in cash and assumption by Harris of a $23 million capitalized lease. The company will use the sale proceeds to pay down debt.
Joe Morone, president and CEO of Albany International, said in a statement that the acquisition “essentially doubles the growth potential of Albany Engineered Composites (AEC) this decade. And because of the resulting breadth and depth of technology, capabilities, and experience, the new AEC becomes a major presence in the aerospace composites industry, with the potential for significantly more growth next decade.”
Harris’s former Aerostructures unit had $77 million in sales last year. Albany expects the business to have between $80 million and $90 million in sales this year and adjusted operating earnings between $13 million and $15 million.
The Aerostructures business supplies composite products mostly for airframes, including Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and CH-53K helicopter, and Boeing’s [BA] 787 commercial aircraft. The division also supplies the vacuum waste tanks for most of Boeing’s 7-Series aircraft, components of the airframe on a family of air-to-surface missiles built by Lockheed Martin, and has small positions on the airframes of the Airbus Group’s A350 and A380 planes and on General Electric’s [GE] GEnx engines.