Accenture made a big move with the acquisition of Umlaut, an ER&D vendor headquartered in Germany. The transaction comes as a surprise: umlaut brings EUR 350m in revenues. It is the first sizable acquisition that Accenture made for Industry X. Up to now
ER&D vendors continue to be very active in M&As, with many tuck-in acquisitions. AFRY is now in full acquisition mode with six transactions in 2021 YTD. Competitor Sweco has also accelerated with four transactions. Accenture has made an unusual transaction by taking over a manufacturer of industrial automation and robots in Brazil for Accenture Industry X. Finally, Cognizant acquired a significant German automotive ER&D vendor, ESG.
Accenture made another acquisition for its Industry X.0 unit. The newly acquired firm is Callisto Integration, an industrial IT specialist that is headquartered in Oakville, Ontario.
Despite the stock market melt-down, ER&D vendors have continued to make tuck-in acquisitions in the past two weeks. The acquired firms were of small size and not likely to impact the net debt of their new owners. However, should the Covid-19-China-US trade-war-Stock Markets meltdown-oil price crisis degenerate into a recession, we expect suck tuck-in acquisitions to become scarce.
NelsonHall has published a new blog about how Accenture, through Industry X.0, is not only targeting product design and engineering opportunities but also digital manufacturing.
It has been almost three years since Accenture launched Industry X.0, and we estimate that Accenture acquired nine competitors in these 36 months. The pace is accelerating with Accenture having five competitors in 2019, YTD.