Ametek to Buy Indicor's Instrumentation Businesses for $5bn
May 6, 2026 - 11:25 am
Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) has secured one of the cleanest mid-market industrial partial exits of 2026, three and a half years after spinning out the portfolio from Roper Technologies. Ametek, a Pennsylvania-based scientific and industrial instrumentation company, will acquire Indicor's test-and-measurement businesses for approximately $5bn.
This deal, first reported by the Wall Street Journal in late April, marks CD&R's largest single partial exit of the year.
Indicor itself is a 16-brand portfolio that emerged from Roper Technologies in 2022, with CD&R securing a 51% majority stake at an enterprise value of $3.6bn and Roper retaining a 49% minority interest plus $2.6bn in upfront cash. The new company, adopting the Indicor brand in January 2023, combines approximately $1.1bn in 2022 revenue across pumps, valves, test-and-measurement equipment, sensors, and meters.
Ametek is acquiring only the test-and-measurement subset; the pumps-and-valves businesses (Roper Pump, Cornell, AMOT, Hansen) remain within Indicor under CD&R’s continued majority ownership. The assets align precisely with Ametek's existing instrumentation core, precision measurement, materials testing, polymer-process analytics, process-control sensors, categories the company has been growing through strategic acquisitions for two decades.
On disclosed terms, CD&R is selling roughly half of Indicor for $5bn after acquiring it at a $3.6bn enterprise value four years ago. The implied multiple lands around 12-14x EBITDA, with CD&R projected to achieve a 2.5–3.5x money multiple on its original equity once the remaining businesses exit separately.
This is exceptional by current mid-market industrial buyout standards, as the past year has seen challenging conditions for PE industrial exits due to rising rates and compressed strategic buyer multiples.
Roper Technologies benefits as well. As announced in 2022, its 49% minority stake entitles it to a proportional share of the proceeds from this exit, adding to the cash returned on top of the original $2.6bn. This transaction offers valuable side validation of Roper's decision to divest these industrial businesses in favor of higher-multiple software operations.
While most M&A coverage in 2026 has focused on AI infrastructure and frontier-model distribution, this deal highlights a significant transaction in traditional industrials.