How Hillenbrand buried its past to build a $3.8B future

Hillenbrand Inc. had one foot buried in a shrinking funeral business and the other in cyclical factory equipment. What happens when profitability isn’t enough?

The price Hillenbrand fetched for selling its 115-year-old Batesville casket division. This one move in 2023 completed Hillenbrand’s rebirth as a pure-play industrial company, freeing up cash to pay down debt and refocus on growth markets.

Here’s what you’ll learn: 

In the 2010s, Hillenbrand sold caskets and industrial machinery. Neither business had a reliable growth engine.

Batesville, its casket division, had been profitable for decades. EBITDA margins ran in the low-to-mid 20s. But the math was turning against the burial business. In 2005, 32% of Americans chose cremation. By 2010, that number hit 40%. By 2018, Batesville's revenue had fallen 2% to $551 million while the rest of Hillenbrand grew. Management admitted casket volumes were shrinking and would keep shrinking. About 30% of the company's 2018 revenue came from an industry losing ground every year.

The industrial side had a different problem. Hillenbrand had expanded into plastics molding, extrusion, and material handling. These are capital equipment businesses. When automakers or construction firms feel confident, they buy big machines. When the economy wobbles, they don't. In 2019, Hillenbrand doubled down with a $1.9 billion acquisition of Milacron, tripling its industrial footprint. Then orders got choppy. By late 2022, injection molding equipment orders had slumped badly enough to cut that segment's backlog by 36%.

Both sides of the portfolio were squeezing margins. Batesville couldn't raise prices much. Push too hard and families switch to cremation. The industrial businesses faced raw material inflation that was hard to pass through. For fiscal 2019, Hillenbrand guided to 1-3% revenue growth overall. Caskets were expected to decline 1-3%. Equipment might inch up a few points.

The company was using Batesville's cash to fund industrial expansion. But it had no unified identity. Investors saw a casket company bolting on factory equipment. That story wasn't working.

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Hillenbrand's fix was simple in concept: sell the shrinking business, buy growing ones, refocus.

In late 2022, the company announced it would sell Batesville to private equity firm LongRange Capital for $761.5 million. The deal closed in February 2023. CEO Kim Ryan called it the final step in becoming "a pure-play industrial company." Overnight, Hillenbrand went from 20% casket revenue to zero.

Then it went shopping. In 2022 alone, Hillenbrand spent roughly $740 million on four acquisitions. Linxis Group, at about €572 million, brought six brands making mixers and ingredient systems for bakeries and pharmaceutical plants. Revenue around €300 million, EBITDA margins in the mid-teens. Herbold Meckesheim added plastics recycling equipment. Peerless Food Equipment, a $59 million deal, made industrial dough mixers. Gabler brought extrusion tech for food and pharma packaging.

The pattern was clear: highly engineered equipment with an installed base that needs parts and service. Aftermarket revenue is stickier and higher-margin than selling new machines.

The pruning continued. In 2025, Hillenbrand sold a 51% stake in Milacron to Bain Capital for $287 million. This was the most cyclical piece of the portfolio, the injection molding machines that had seen orders collapse in 2022. Hillenbrand kept 49% and retained Mold-Masters and DME, the higher-margin hot runner and mold components businesses.

Debt stayed manageable. Net leverage hit about 2.8x after the 2022 acquisition spree. Management guided it back toward 2.6x after the Batesville sale closed. The company kept paying dividends and bought back $266 million in shares in 2022.

The 2019 Milacron integration had beaten its $50 million synergy target, reaching $75 million. That playbook got applied to the new acquisitions.

The numbers tell the story. In fiscal 2023, Hillenbrand's first full year without caskets, revenue hit $2.83 billion. That was up 22% from the prior year. Strip out acquisitions and organic growth was still 4%. Adjusted EPS rose 31% to $3.52.

Margins improved. By Q4 2023, adjusted EBITDA margin reached 19.3%, up 90 basis points from a year earlier. The Advanced Process Solutions segment ran at 22.8% EBITDA margin that quarter. Management set a target of 250 basis points of margin expansion by 2025.

The mix shift explains a lot of this. Aftermarket parts and service now make up a larger share of revenue. That business doesn't swing as hard as new equipment sales. When a food manufacturer already owns a Coperion extruder or a Linxis mixer, they need replacement parts and maintenance whether the economy is growing or not.

Hillenbrand entered fiscal 2024 with a $1.9 billion backlog in its process solutions segment, up 34% year over year. Nearly 30% of revenue now comes from food and recycling end markets. Before the transformation, that figure was under 5%.

The composition change is stark. In 2008, when Hillenbrand spun off from Hill-Rom, 100% of revenue came from caskets. By 2018, caskets were 30%. Today, zero.

In October 2025, Lone Star Funds agreed to take Hillenbrand private for $3.8 billion, paying $32 per share in cash. Kim Ryan said the deal reflected "tremendous progress transforming into a pure-play industrial company." A decade earlier, investors saw a casket maker bolting on equipment businesses. Now a private equity firm saw an industrial compounder worth nearly $4 billion.

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$761.5M - Cash proceeds from the divestment of the casket business

$3.8B - Enterprise value of Lone Star’s take private deal

$2.07B - FY 2025 revenue for the Advanced Process Soluments segment

$730M - Acquisition price of Schenck Process’s food and performance materials business, boosting Hillenbrand’s food production and processing capacity.

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