CRH to buy US peer Arcosa for $8.5bn in biggest deal to date – The Irish Times

CRH, the building materials and services giant, said on Monday it had agreed to buy US peer Arcosa in a deal worth $8.5 billion (€7.4 billion), which would make it the Irish group’s largest purchase to date.

The Dublin-based group said Arcosa, a leading aggregates company and maker of critical infrastructure products, would be “highly complementary” to CRH’s existing business. The value of the deal includes both Dallas-based Arcosa’s equity and debt.

“This strategic acquisition reinforces our position as the number one infrastructure player in North America and advances our strategy to build an aggregates-led, connected portfolio,” said Jim Mintern, CRH’s chief executive since January 2025.

“As demand for US energy and utility infrastructure solutions accelerates, this transaction places CRH at the forefront of an immense growth opportunity and demonstrates our ongoing commitment to building market-leading positions through disciplined capital allocation.”

The transaction is the largest of more than 1,200 deals that CRH, which was formed in 1970 through the merger of Cement Limited and Roadstone Limited, that the group has carried out in its history, Mintern said on a call with analysts.

It would eclipse CRH’s €6.5 billion deal to buy cement and construction assets that European rivals Holcim and Lafarge had to sell to appease competition authorities before their own merger in 2015.

North America accounted for 71 per cent of CRH’s $7.7 billion adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation last year and three-quarters of its net profit. The Arcosa deal would increase CRH’s reliance on that market.

Mintern set out a strategy last September for CRH to spend $40 billion on investment and cash returns to shareholders over the next five years as it continues to grow revenues and earnings apace. Some $28 billion was earmarked for investment. The Arcosa deal equated to about 30 per cent of the investment pot.

CRH’s focus is on four key areas: aggregates, cement and sustainable alternatives, roads and water. It sees these benefiting from three infrastructure mega-trends: continuing investment in the transport system, from roads to airports; a need to develop water management; and the re-industrialisation of the US.

Mintern said the Arcosa transaction fed into these megatrends, and increases CRH’s exposure to the utilities sector.

Arcosa currently produces 35 million tonnes of high-quality, natural and recycled aggregates and serves 13 of the 50 largest US metropolitan regions, across Texas, New Jersey, Arizona, Florida and Tennessee. It will bring CRH’s total annual production to more than 265 million tonnes.

The deal is one of the rare occasions where CRH has targeted a public company. The offer implies a 25 per cent premium to Arcosa’s average price over the past two months.

Factoring in CRH’s expectations that it will generate $175 million of cost synergies within three years of the purchase going through, it estimates the acquisition price equates to 11.5 times adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) estimates for this year.

Mintern said this was along the lines of the multiple that CRH itself was trading on.

Goodbody analyst Shane Carberry said the deal was “strategically compelling” and further strengthened CRH’s exposure to higher-growth US infrastructure markets.

“The deal would reinforce CRH’s positioning in structural infrastructure themes while remaining consistent with its disciplined capital allocation approach,” he said “We see this as a clear positive for the equity story.”

CRH shares fell about 1 per cent in early trading in New York, bringing the decline so far this year to almost 13 per cent.