Eaton To Buy Tripp Lite For $1.65B In Blockbuster Power Play

Power giant Eaton is acquiring fellow power and data center hardware competitor Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion in a move to significantly enhance its power and edge computing portfolio.

Dublin, Ireland-based Eaton, which has 92,000 employees worldwide and customers in more than 175 countries, plans to leverage Tripp Lite’s massive power and data center infrastructure portfolio that includes more than 5,000 products.

“The acquisition of Tripp Lite will enhance the breadth of our edge computing and distributed IT product portfolio and expand our single-phase UPS business,” said Uday Yadav, president and chief operating officer of Eaton’s Electrical Sector, in a statement.

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Tripp Lite specializes in data center infrastructure and power offerings including UPSes, battery packs, UPS battery backups, power distribution units and a broad portfolio of data center hardware. The Chicago-based company also sells KVM networking switches, server racks, sensors, fiber network cables, interactive displays and its EdgeReady micro data centers.

Tripp Lite touts EdgeReady as the industry’s first and only micro data centers that ship in three business days with dozens of stock configurations available. Tripp Lite also can customize every aspect of each configuration to match specific applications.

Eaton’s acquisition of Tripp Lite is expected to close in the middle of 2021.

Eaton’s last acquisition came in February 2020, when it completed the purchase of another power and data center hardware competitor, Richmond, Va.-based Power Distribution.

The company has been doubling down in creating new power software and power management as-a-service offerings. Eaton recently reported third fiscal quarter sales of $4.5 billion, down 9 percent year over year.

“Our third quarter was stronger than expected, with organic sales down 9 percent, 6 percent better than the midpoint of our guidance range and up 16 percent over the second quarter,” said Eaton CEO Craig Arnold during the company’s third-quarter earnings report in November. “We are pleased with our solid results despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Eaton and Tripp Lite are channel focused vendors with both companies receiving a 5-Star rating in CRN’s 2020 Partner Program Guide.