Foundry group Grede Holdings and two forging manufacturers have been combined in a new holding company and listed in recent initial public offering. The Metaldyne Performance Group was assembled last summer by private-equity group American Securities LLC, and the IPO of 10 million shares was launched in December 2014 at $15.00/share.
American Securities, the majority shareholder, has over $10 billion under management in different industrial sectors, including manufacturing, health care, power/energy, services, and consumer markets.
Grede Holdings was formed in 2009 by investors consolidating the former Grede LLC and Citation Corp. organizations. After several further acquistions, it now includes 17 foundries and machine shops in the U.S. and Mexico, where it manufactures gray and ductile iron castings, and specialty ferrous products like high-silicon molybdenum iron castings.
Grede recently started a $17.5-million, 32,000-square-foot expansion to its St. Cloud, MN, iron foundry.
In June 2014, Grede Holdings was acquired by American Securities LLC, which organized the foundry group and two other holdings as Metaldyne Performance Group in August 2014. The group claims to have 61 plants operating in 13 countries.
“The transformative merger is designed to enable Grede, HHI and Metaldyne, three established automotive suppliers, to strengthen their market position across metal forming technologies, expand their global footprints and leverage certain cross-selling opportunities that exist between the companies while benefitting from operational synergies,” according to a statement at that time.
HHI is a collection of forging operations supplying products like transmission parts, drivetrain components, wheel hubs, axle ring and pinion gears, sprockets, balance shaft gears, timing drive systems, and more, mainly to North American light vehicle OEMs and Tier I suppliers. The operations include Cloyes Gear, FormTech, Jernberg, and Impact Forge.
Metaldyne also forges automotive products, mainly for global light vehicle markets. Its products include powder metal connecting rods, VVT components, balance shaft systems, engine crankshaft dampers, net-forged differential gears and pinions, differential assemblies, valve bodies, hollow shafts, clutch modules, and end covers.
“The IPO will further strengthen MPG and Grede’s position as leaders in the metal-forming industry,” stated Doug Grimm, CEO of Grede and co-president of MPG. “This public offering will provide us with additional flexibility to raise capital in the future to serve our customers and continue to expand our business.”