Johnson Controls to acquire Silent-Aire in €870m deal
Johnson Controls has agreed to acquire Silent-Aire, a hyper-scale data centre cooling and modular critical infrastructure solutions company.
A provider of equipment, controls and services for heating, ventilating, air-conditioning, and securing buildings, Johnson Controls hopes to establish a leadership position in high-growth data centre vertical through the acquisition.
The transaction, subject to regulatory approval, is valued at up to $870 million, including an upfront payment of approximately $630 million and additional payments to be made subject to the achievement of post-closing earn out milestones.
Silent-Aire specialises in the design, engineering and manufacturing of mission critical custom air handlers and modular data centres for hyper-scale cloud and colocation providers. Silent-Aire’s portfolio of data centre solutions allow for rapid deployment of critical infrastructure in flexible configurations, with a focus on quality, scalability, and speed-to-market. Silent-Aire’s revenue for fiscal year 2021 (May) is expected to approximate $650 million.
“With Silent-Aire, Johnson Controls has a significant opportunity to increase our focus on the data centre vertical and accelerate growth in this attractive end market by combining the strengths of our global scale in manufacturing and service, with leading-edge innovation and a broad portfolio of technologies dedicated to serving hyper-scale providers,” said George Oliver, chairman and CEO, Johnson Controls.
“This acquisition perfectly aligns with several of our key strategic growth initiatives and underscores our focus on creating shareholder value,” Oliver continued. “We are incredibly excited to welcome Silent-Aire to the Johnson Controls family as we look to build upon their success of nearly 30 years of innovation, operational expertise, and deep customer relationships.”
The continuous migration of applications to the cloud has resulted in unprecedented demand for computing power and the rapid expansion of data centre infrastructure. Over the last several years, this trend has overwhelmingly favoured the development of hyper-scale cloud and colocation facilities. Hyper-scale providers have unique capabilities in deploying large-scale computing power with increasingly more efficient, more rapidly deployed solutions and with greater geographic reach. To accomplish this, hyper-scalers require trusted global partners, such as Silent-Aire, that provide highly efficient, sustainable and reliable products along with consistent and dependable execution.
“Silent-Aire grew up with the cloud and our DNA translates what it means to be a hyper-scale data centre company,” said Lindsey Leckelt, co-CEO, Silent-Aire. “Being an innovative partner with early adopters, we broke through traditional design barriers that pushed energy initiatives in what led to how most hyper-scale data centres are cooled and engineered today.
“The culture in our business captures this unique skill set and is scaled through to our engineering, operations, and manufacturing teams to keep up with the explosive growth of cloud providers. Johnson Controls shares our vision to scale as a data centre platform business, which will enable us to serve our partners globally.”
“Sustainability has been a major focus as we’ve grown our family business throughout our history,” added Dan Leckelt, co-CEO, Silent-Aire. “Maintaining our growth to match our customers’ demands has taken us from 30 employees to 3,000 over this period.
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