The Owner of Belcan and CDI Corp Acquires D&D Power for its BHI Energy Business
The owner of Belcan, private equity firm AE Industrial Partners, has acquired D&D Power, for its BHI Energy business.
D&D Power is an electrical contractor providing installation, repair and maintenance services for its client’s distribution and transmission businesses, and also storm restoration services on electrical power lines. The company is headquartered in Latham, NY, and serves clients in the Northeastern and Southern parts of the US for its mainstream business, and across the US for storm restorations services. BHI Energy had limited transmission and distributed technical service capabilities apparently, and D&D fits the needs of BHI.
AE Industrial Partners had made three ER&D and technical services staffing acquisitions in the two to three years with Belcan, CDI Corp, and BHI Energy. The PE firm moved quickly to build-up mode for Belcan with a bit less than ten acquisitions in the past three years. And this is the first acquisition for BHI Energy. For now, AE Industrial Partners refrained from making any M&A for CDI Corp: CDI had been loss-making for three years before its take-over by AE Industrial Partners, and in all likelihood, it is moving first on restoring its profitability before adding new firms to its perimeter.
I initially had thought that the private equity funds would combine part of these businesses, notably Belcan and CDI Corp (with BHI being more on the technical side, and less in engineering). So far, these combinations have been limited, with only one transaction: Belcan taking over the aerospace unit of CDI Corp.
CDI Corp’s federal business seemed the next logical step, since Belcan is actively expanding its own US government engineering and IT services capabilities. This has not happened.
Also, it is not clear whether AE Industrial Partners want to keep the three firms focused on their core staffing businesses, or is pushing the firms towards more project activities, with, assumably, away from the low margins found in staffing.