Precision Castparts to buy Bellevue company for $900M

Precision Castparts, a components manufacturer in Portland, has agreed to pay $900 million in cash for Bellevue-based aerospace supplier Primus International.

Primus is owned by private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners and employs about 1,000 people at three assembly plants in the Seattle area — Bothell, Woodinville and Auburn — and an additional 500 in Tulsa, Okla.; Suzhou, China; Bangkok, Thailand; and Farnborough, England.

Precision's only Washington business is Fatigue Technology south of Renton, which has about 160 workers.

A Precision spokesman said it is too early to say whether it will keep all Primus employees, but that the company typically buys companies to expand rather than shrink them.

Both companies make components for the aerospace industry, and Precision also specializes in parts for industrial gas turbines.

Primus makes bigger components, known as "aerostructures." Precision Castparts has only a couple of small businesses that do that now, and spokesman Dwight Weber said it could become a major segment for the company in the future.

"It's a several billion-dollar market, and Primus has maybe 10 percent of it," Weber said. "We wouldn't be building fuselages and wings, but things on the way to being assembled into fuselages and wings."

Precision CEO Mark Donegan praised Primus for assembling parts for its customers, which include Boeing and Airbus.

"The company has done particularly well in taking components they make and incorporating rods, fasteners and other components to ultimately supply an assembly instead of a single part, increasing the value delivered to the customer," Donegan said in a news release.

Precision has 18,100 employees and was the third best-performing public company in the Northwest for 2010, according to a proprietary Seattle Times ranking.

The deal is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to be completed in the second quarter of fiscal 2012.

Precision's stock fell 99 cents, or 0.6 percent, to $161.80 Monday.

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com

The Associated Press contributed to this report.