For some people, Emcor Group Inc. buying a nearly century-old Jacksonville company will have a familiar ring.
Norwalk, Connecticut-based Emcor announced an agreement Jan. 14 to buy 97-year-old Miller Electric Co. for $865 million.
That follows a 2010 acquisition of Jacksonville-based Harry Pepper & Associates, which was founded in 1918.
The Harry Pepper deal did not receive as much attention as Miller Electric, which is a much more visible company in Jacksonville.
The electrical company is probably best known as the sponsor of the Jacksonville Jaguars’ training facility, the Miller Electric Center.
Miller began working with the Jaguars when the expansion franchise was awarded in 1993, providing services for the renovation of the former Gator Bowl stadium for its move into the NFL.
The Jaguars and Miller announced a 10-year naming rights agreement for the training center in 2022, a year before it opened.
Harry Pepper provides mechanical, electrical and plumbing construction services for institutional and government organizations.
It continues to be headquartered in Jacksonville, just as Emcor said Miller Electric will remain based in Jacksonville.
Emcor, a Fortune 500 company with revenue of about $14.5 billion last year, has about 100 operating companies.
Its businesses provide a range of mechanical and electrical construction services, industrial and energy infrastructure and building services.
According to the company’s website, Emcor has another Jacksonville-based company called Certified Control Systems, which provides products for the building automation industry.
The company’s financial filings have no information on when it acquired Certified Control Systems.
Emcor was formed in 1966 as the Jamaica Water Supply Co., providing water to parts of Long Island and Queens, New York.
It took on the name JWP Inc. in 1986 and was renamed Emcor after emerging from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 1995.
Emcor Group has completed 19 acquisitions with an average purchase price of $560 million over the last 30 years according to Tracxn Technologies, a market intelligence firm.
Emcor did not disclose the price it paid to buy Harry Pepper. It said at the time of the deal Harry Pepper’s estimated 2010 revenue was about $100 million.
The company said Miller had about $805 million in 2024 revenue.
Miller Electric was founded in 1928 by Henry G. Miller.
Former CEO Ron Autrey told the Daily Record in a 2012 interview that Miller moved from Chicago and bought a company that sold appliances and lighting fixtures and did some residential wiring.
Henry Miller expanded the company by taking on more commercial and government projects, including for the military, Autrey said.
Autrey’s interview came shortly before his nephew, Henry Brown, succeeded him as CEO.
Brown will continue as Miller Electric CEO after the acquisition by Emcor is completed, which is expected in the first half of this year.
Cadre Holdings Inc. is known as a provider of safety and survivability products mainly for law enforcement and first responder markets.
However, the Jacksonville-based company sees an opportunity in expanding its nuclear safety business.
Cadre announced an agreement Jan. 15 to buy a group of businesses from England-based Carr’s Group PLC that provide products and services for nuclear end markets.
This follows the acquisition a year ago of Colorado-based Alpha Safety, which provides products and services focused on radiation protection and safety.
“At that time, we conveyed that the Alpha Safety acquisition was just the first step,” Cadre CEO Warren Kanders said in a Jan. 16 conference call with analysts.
“In establishing our position within the nuclear market, we saw significant built-in growth opportunities as well as an attractive path forward for additional M&A in the space,” he said.
Kanders said acquisitions in nuclear markets are part of a plan to diversify its business and the addition of Carr’s operations complement its other nuclear safety products.
“We made the decision to enter the nuclear end market last year because we identified key drivers that we expect to enable consistent financial returns for Cadre over the long term,” he said.
“Our conviction has only grown stronger based on current market trends.”
Cadre was formed from businesses that were a part of Jacksonville-based Armor Holdings Inc., which was run by Kanders.
England-based BAE Systems Inc. bought Armor in 2007 but in 2012, Kanders led an investment group that bought back the subsidiary that focused on products for first responders.
Kanders took Cadre public in 2021 and has looked to continue growing the company through acquisitions.
Cadre agreed to pay 75 million British pounds in cash to buy the Carr’s operations, which is about $92 million.
It said the businesses produced revenue of about 51 million pounds in its last fiscal year, about $63 million.
Cadre said Alpha Safety had annual revenue of $44 million when it announced that acquisition in February 2024.
Cadre’s total revenue was about $392 million in the first nine months of 2024.
The company’s annual report last year said the total addressable market for its nuclear safety products is between $3 billion and $6 billion in the U.S.
The addition of Carr’s businesses will expand its nuclear business to customers in Europe and Japan, Cadre said.
Kanders said in the conference call he anticipates additional opportunities to acquire nuclear safety businesses.
“As always, we will employ a patient, thorough and disciplined approach to our future M&A,” he said.
As KB Home held its year-end conference call Jan. 13, CEO Jeffrey Mezger singled out Jacksonville as a market with favorable trends for homebuyers, based on resale inventory levels.
“Most of the markets are in pretty similar inventory situations, resale inventory levels three and half to four months in that range,” said Mezger, whose company builds homes in 47 U.S. markets.
“There’s a couple I can call out that are higher than that. One would be in Austin and the other for us would be in Jacksonville,” he said.
That metric measures the number of months it would take for the inventory of homes available to sell and the longer the time period, the better for buyers because sellers may have to lower prices to sell the properties.
“In both of those cases, if you look at the resale inventory and the pricing, it’s at price levels much higher than we operate at,” Mezger said, indicating new properties built by KB Home are priced lower than existing houses up for sale.
“So we’re in a competitive position in those (markets) where inventory has moved up a bit,” he said.
KB Home reported revenue rose 8% to $6.93 billion in the fiscal year ended Nov. 30, with earnings rising 11% to $655 million, or $8.45 per share.
Fidelity National Information Services Inc., or FIS, “delivered an impressive turnaround in ’24 with accelerating revenue growth and margin expansion,” Wells Fargo analyst Andrew Bauch said in a Jan. 14 research report.
However, Bauch isn’t expecting big gains in the stock in 2025. He initiated coverage of Jacksonville-based FIS with an “equal weight” rating and an $88 price target, with the stock trading at $78.63 at the time of his report.
FIS in early 2024 sold off a majority interest in its Worldpay payments technology business, which had produced disappointing results since FIS bought it for $43 billion in 2019.
The company is now focused on its core banking technology business and capital markets technology unit.
“Management has made admirable progress in orchestrating the revenue growth acceleration and delivered margin expansion post Worldpay with a shrewd strategy focused on investments in high-growth areas, accretive tuck-in M&A, stringent cost actions, and buybacks,” Bauch said.
“Encouragingly, we think the plan has limited the near-term downside and stemmed the legacy narrative, but lacks a compelling upside case,” he said.
FIS does have long-standing relationships with the largest U.S. banks, which could help the company grow revenue.
“We expect that FIS would be a net beneficiary of M&A to the extent that current regulations are loosened allowing for bank consolidation,” Bauch said.
“Given the recent election outcome, we expect the current regulatory environment easing, and resumption of the prior M&A cadence in the Banking sector. In this scenario, we expect many of the acquirers will be FIS clients,” he said.
However, Bauch doesn’t see bank mergers providing immediate results for FIS.
“A potential bank M&A renaissance could accrue benefits to FIS over time, but would take time to materialize,” he said.
North Carolina-based Bland Landscaping acquired Jacksonville-based Koehn Outdoor, according to a Jan. 13 news release by Bland’s owner, Comvest Private Equity.
Koehn, founded in 2004, provides landscape management services to commercial clients in Northeast Florida and South Georgia, focusing on homeowners associations and multifamily customers.
Bland provides commercial landscaping services with 12 branches in the Carolinas.
“We are excited to enter Florida and join forces with another founder-led team and premier provider of landscaping services,” CEO Kurt Bland said in a news release.
Founder David Koehn will continue as president of Bland’s Jacksonville office.
“This collaboration represents an incredible opportunity for both teams,” Koehn said in the release.
“By leveraging our combined resources, we can achieve even greater success while remaining true to our commitment to quality and customer satisfaction.”
Terms of the deal were not announced.
Comvest Private Equity is part of West Palm Beach-based Comvest Partners, which says it has $15.3 billion in assets under management.