Fortive


Fortive is a diversified industrial technology conglomerate company headquartered in Everett, Washington, United States. Fortive was spun off from Danaher in July 2016. Mitchell Rales and Steven M. Rales, Danaher's founders, retained board seats with Fortive after the separation. At the point of its independent incorporation, Fortive immediately became a component of the S&P 500. In 2016, Fortive controlled over 20 businesses in the areas of field instrumentation, transportation, sensing, product realization, automation, and franchise distribution. Later the transportation, automation and franchise distribution businesses would be spun off. In 2018 and 2019, Fortune named Fortive as a Future 50 company. In 2020, Fortune named Fortive one of the worlds most admired companies along with other major tech companies like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. 2020 also marked the third year in a row Fortive has been named to the Fortune 500.

Fortive Acquisitions

Notable Subsidiary Acquisitions:
In September 2016, Fluke acquired eMaint, a leading CMMS IIoT system. In October 2016, Gilbarco Veeder-Root purchased Global Transportation Technologies, a leading provider in traffic management. These marked two early moves by Fortive subsidiaries in pursuit of Fortive's vision of building on their legacy heavy asset manufacturing businesses with software-enabled workflow technologies.
In July 2019, Fluke acquired Germany based :cs:Prüftechnik|Pruftechnik, a market leader in precision laser shaft alignment, condition monitoring, and non-destructive testing, to further their reliability business unit.
In addition to previous acquisitions, like Predictive Solutions and ActiveBlu, as a Fortive operating company, Industrial Scientific has made multiple acquisitions. In June 2019 Industrial Scientific entered in a definitive agreement to buy Canadian based Intelex, a leading global provider of SaaS-based Environmental, Health, Safety and Quality management software. The following month, Industrial Scientific entered a definitive agreement to acquire SAFER Systems, a global leader in real-time plume modeling and mitigation solutions for the chemical, oil & gas, and transportation industries.
2017:
In September 2017, Fortive purchased Landuaer for $770 million. Landauer is a leading global provider of subscription-based technical and analytical services to determine occupational and environmental radiation exposure, as well as a leading domestic provider of outsourced medical physics services. They are headquartered in Glenwood, Illinois.
2018:
In July 2018, Fortive announced it was buying a software firm named Accruent for about $2 billion. Accruent makes software to track real estate and facilities. Also in July 2018, Fortive announced it would buy construction software company Gordian for $775 million from private equity firm Warburg Pincus. Gordian, based in Greenville, South Carolina, makes software that tracks costs of construction projects, manages facility operations and generally gives building companies more insight into big projects.
2019:
In June 2018, Fortive made a binding offer to buy Johnson & Johnson's Advanced Sterilization Products business. The deal was valued at $2.8 billion, made up of $2.7 billion in cash from Fortive and $0.1 billion of retained net receivables closed in April 2019. Furthering their investment in the healthcare space, in November 2019 Fortive acquired Censis Technologies, a SaaS-based provider of inventory management in the surgical field headquartered in Franklin, Tenn., from Riverside, a global private equity firm headquartered in Cleveland Ohio. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Fortive Divestitures

In October 2018, Fortive spun off their automation businesses, namely, Kollmorgen, Thomson, Portescap, Jacobs Vehicle Systems, and associated subsidiaries to Altra Industrial Motion for an estimated $3 billion.
In September 2019, Fortive announced its intention to split into two separate publicly traded companies. In January of 2020, the name of the new company was announced as Vontier. Vontier would comprise the transportation and franchises businesses. Specifically, the spin off would included Gilbarco Veeder Root, Matco Tools, Hennessey, GTT, Teletrac Navman, and associated subsidiaries. The IPO was estimated to yield $1 billion, but was postponed in April 2020 due to uncertainty in the market stemming from the COVID pandemic.

Innovation

Historically growth in Fortive's portfolio companies had primarily been realized through M&A activity and operational excellence under the vaunted Danaher Business System. Fortive has sought to unlock organic growth as another key growth driver through establishing a culture of experimentation and innovation. Early on this meant working with Innovators DNA to incorporate best practices. Fortive's approach has proved successful. Notable new product introductions have included Tektronix MS05X "Elemental", Fluke's T6, Invetech’s Formulate and Fill Platform, Anderson-Negele's Paperless Recorder, and Fluke's ii900. In the middle of the COVID pandemic, when there was a shortage of N-95 masks, ASP quickly innovated on existing technology to allow hospitals to clean masks.
In May 2020, Fortive partnered with Pioneer Square Labs to launch tech start ups. In June 2020, Fortive, in partnership with PSL, launched Team Sense.

Culture

Fortive's culture is founded on two key principles--continuous improvement and integrity & compliance.
Fortive's continuous improvement culture dates back to the Toyota Production System adopted by Danaher. At Fortive it has been branded as the Fortive Business System or FBS for short. FBS has evolved to fit the needs of Fortive's operating companies and strategic focus on innovation. FBS has been referenced on multiple earnings calls as a key driver for sustained growth and operational excellence within the various operating companies.
Fortives culture around integrity and compliance has led to several key initiatives around Inclusion and Diversity. In 2018, 2019 and 2020 Fortive was named among the best places to work for LGBTQ Equality by the Human Rights Campaign. Fortive has been a long standing partner with the Consortium, an organization committed to enhance diversity and inclusion in global business leadership by striving to reduce the significant underrepresentation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans.
Fortive also allows each of its associates a paid day of leave each year to volunteer in their local community. In 2020 Newsweek named Fortive as one of their top 500 most responsible companies.