TRENTON, N.J. — In a deal worth a cool $10 billion, Ingersoll-Rand Co. will acquire Trane Inc. and create one of the world’s largest makers of commercial and residential home air conditioners, refrigerators for trucks and stores, and other climate-control products.
But some Ingersoll-Rand shareholders, who had expected the cash-rich company to pour some money into share repurchases, seemed disappointed with the acquisition announced Monday and sold Ingersoll-Rand stock, driving shares down sharply.
The $10.1 billion cash and stock deal — one of the largest industrial buyouts in recent years — gives Ingersoll-Rand, which makes Thermo King refrigerated trucks and Hussmann refrigerated display cases, access to Trane’s building and transportation cooling systems.
“What they bought in Trane is a premier position in climate control,” with $11 billion in annual revenues, said industrial manufacturing analyst Eli Lustgarten of Longbow Securities.
That will be nearly two-thirds of the combined company’s expected 2008 revenues of $17 billion, slightly more than double the current total revenue for each.
Lustgarten noted that will make the combined company No. 2 in air conditioning, after the $14 billion-a-year business of Carrier Corp., a unit of United Technologies Corp.
The acquisition comes as demand is increasing in emerging markets. Sales are up 25 percent a year in India, where Carrier is building a $50 million research and development center.
