In its Q3 earnings release today, building products manufacturer Gibraltar Industries (NASDAQ: ROCK) revealed that it has purchased Ohio-based cannabis extraction equipment company Apeks Supercritical recently. The company, which closed the acquisition in late August, disclosed trailing annual sales through June of $17.7 million, making it a relatively small part of the overall company, which generated sales in the first three quarters of the year of $789 million and expects full-year sales to exceed $1.04 billion.
With Gibraltar’s established portfolio of products and services focused on assisting our customers in designing, building and enhancing their cultivation operations, we recognized our next opportunity to support our customers with optimizing their processing operations.
Bill Bosway, Gibraltar Industries CEO
As a result, we have taken our first step forward with the acquisition of Apeks Supercritical, a company that holds a leading position in extraction processing with a strong leadership team, patented technology, and leading-edge clean extraction technology. We are excited about this market, and will continue to broaden our capabilities, and relevance with our customers.
CEO Bill Bosway, who joined the firm in January, has extended upon a previous initiative to serve the cannabis industry, which has been historically through serving cultivators. His predecessor, Frank Heard, said a year ago on an earnings call “So, we view the cannabis market as much larger than just a greenhouse. And that’s where we’re spending our time to try to figure out where other than the green house side, should we be participating in from an innovative technology perspective. So early days, but I’ve personally sat in a couple of those strategic thinking conferences and done tours of various type of technology companies that we are not involved in today and it’s an exciting space.”
In its investor presentation, the company described “Acquisitions as a Strategic Accelerator” as one of key initiatives, suggesting that this is the primary focus in terms of its capital allocation. The company detailed the strategic rationale for the acquisition
At its investor day this summer just ahead of buying Apeks, it discussed its vetting process for acquisitions. The company suggested it seeks targets with patents, market leadership and strong management that stays in place. No details were provided regarding the acquisition price.
