Description
TransDigm Group is a publicly traded aerospace manufacturing company headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. TransDigm develops and manufactures engineered aerospace components. It was founded in 1993, when four industrial aerospace companies were combined by a private equity firm in a leveraged buyout. TransDigm expanded the range of aerospace components it manufactures through acquisitions over the years. It filed an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2006.
History
Early history
TransDigm was formed in 1993 under the name TD Holding Corporation. It was founded with an initial equity investment of $10 million. The company was created by founders W. Nicholas Howley and Douglas Peacock along with private equity firm Kelso & Company, in order to acquire and consolidate four industrial aerospace companies from IMO Industries Inc. in a leveraged buyout. Those four companies were Adel Fasteners, Aero Products Component Services, Controlex Corporation and Wiggins Connectors. Once the acquisitions were completed, TD Holding was renamed to TransDigm, Inc. and based in Richmond Heights, Ohio.
Originally, TransDigm manufactured and marketed a small group of aircraft components, such as batteries, pumps, and fuel connectors. TransDigm expanded its range of aircraft component products over time through acquisitions of other aerospace component manufacturers, growing in revenues by about 25 percent per-year from 1993 to 1998. In 1998, Odyssey Investment Partners, a private equity firm, acquired TransDigm from Kelso & Company. After the September 11th attacks, the aerospace industry declined temporarily, resulting in losses and layoffs for TransDigm.
By 2002, TransDigm had grown to $300 million in annual revenues, up from $131 million in 1999. TransDigm was acquired from Odyssey Investment Partners by another private equity firm, Warburg Pincus LLC, in 2003 for $1.1 billion. In 2006, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange. By the following year, TransDigm had grown to $593 million in annual revenues.
Recent history
In 2019, the Department of Defense audited TransDigm's pricing practices for government contracts. It concluded that the Pentagon was purchasing parts from TransDigm at very high profit margins, such as a 9,400% markup on a metal pin. According to the authors of Lessons from the Titans, this is because older aerospace components are not expensive to produce individually, but require keeping expensive dated manufacturing lines active for small-batch production. After a congressional hearing criticizing TransDigm's pricing practices, the company agreed to refund the Pentagon $16 million.
TransDigm's revenues grew by 15-fold from TransDigm's IPO in 2006 to 2020. However, business declined in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the aerospace industry.
