In recent years, many traditional manufacturing companies have expanded their smart home business through acquisitions, such as August Home, which was incorporated into Assa Abloy’s command a few years ago.Now, Generac, a veteran generator manufacturer from Wisconsin, has also announced a new plan to acquire Ecobee, a smart thermostat start-up.
The transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter and is currently awaiting regulatory approval.
It is reported that the company plans to pay Ecobee shareholders US$200 million in cash, plus US$450 million in stocks. If more goals are reached before the transaction is completed, Generac will add up to 120 million US dollars in stock, for a total of 770 million US dollars.
As for Ecobee, headquartered in Toronto, it was founded in 2007 and has since become one of the well-known companies in the IoT/thermostat field with companies such as Nest (the latter was acquired by Google in 2014).
In addition to the original smart thermostat, Ecobee and Nest have gradually expanded other smart home product lines, such as home security cameras and sensors.
Ecobee CEO Stuart Lombard said in a statement:
As an energy technology solutions company, Generac has created many opportunities to combine Ecobee products and its residential equipment products to achieve direct monitoring and control of important parts of household electrical loads.
Ecobee is very happy to join the Generac team and is committed to working together to bring a cleaner, resilient, and sustainable energy future to our customers and communities.
Up to now, Ecobee has raised about 150 million US dollars, and investors include Amazon’s Alexa Fund.
For a while, many people speculated that Amazon intends to acquire Ecobee, which has further consolidated the market position of its Ring smart home brand.
However, the latest news is that Amazon has just announced that it will build a thermostat with the help of Honeywell.