CNH Sells 70% of Its Construction Arm to Kobelco for $700M as Robot Orders Jump 25%

CNH Industrial announced on Nov. 9 that it will sell 70% of its construction equipment business to Kobelco Construction Machinery, a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s Kobe Steel. The deal values the business, which sells excavators, loaders, graders, dozers and backhoes under the CASE Construction, New Holland Construction and Eurocomach brands, at an enterprise value of $1 billion. CNH expects about $700 million in cash, subject to adjustments for debt and working capital, keeps a 30% stake in the new joint venture, and plans to use the money to pay down debt.

The mechanics show what a carve-out really takes. CNH is moving the business into two newly formed companies, one in the UK and one in Delaware, that will operate together as the joint venture. According to the deal filing, closing is expected by the end of 2027 and needs U.S. antitrust clearance plus other merger-control and foreign-investment approvals; either side can walk away if it has not closed by March 30, 2028, with two automatic 90-day extensions if only regulatory approvals remain. Both owners face a three-year lock-up, after which a put-and-call arrangement lets CNH hand Kobelco full ownership, CEO Gerrit Marx told analysts, Bloomberg reported.

After closing, CNH becomes a pure agriculture company built around Case IH, New Holland, STEYR and its Raven precision technology, a business Bloomberg says is about four times the size of construction. It is the third step in a plan that began with buying Raven in 2021 and spinning off truck maker Iveco in 2022. CNH farm dealers will still sell construction machines supplied by the joint venture, but Kobelco dealers will not sell CNH farm equipment. The two companies ran an excavator partnership for a decade before ending it in 2012. On the same day, CNH reported third-quarter revenue of $4.35 billion, flat from a year ago, and adjusted net income of $205 million, up from $109 million.

Factories are spending on automation again. The Association for Advancing Automation (A3) reported that U.S. and Canadian manufacturers ordered 10,989 robots in the third quarter worth $723.5 million, 24.8% more units than a year earlier and the strongest quarter of 2026. Orders from auto parts makers rose 90.4% and from semiconductor and electronics plants 97.6%, while automakers themselves added 7.5% and food and consumer goods fell 23.7%. Collaborative robots, built to work next to people, rose about 56% to 1,831 units. Year to date, orders reached 28,984 robots worth an estimated $1.89 billion.

Another carve-out closed a week earlier. Hexagon completed its purchase of Waygate Technologies from Baker Hughes on Nov. 2, adding industrial CT scanning, X-ray, remote visual inspection and ultrasonic testing. Waygate has about 1,500 employees in 25 locations and earned about $630 million in revenue in 2025. It now sits in Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence unit, where Hexagon plans to pair Waygate’s CT scanners with its Volume Graphics software and measurement tools for inspection across a product’s life.

Every carve-out has to split product data cleanly: which part numbers, drawings, supplier contracts, dealer agreements and service histories go with the business, and which stay. CNH and Kobelco will also need a supply agreement between them from day one. In N23D, BUS keeps the company’s ownership tree and organization in the same system as PLM and ERP, and changes to them go through the same approved-change process as a part revision, with full history. That turns a divestiture into a reviewed list of what moves, what stays and who supplies whom, instead of a spreadsheet.

Sources

• CNH announces agreement to form a joint venture by selling a 70% interest in its Construction Equipment business to Kobelco, CNH (Nov. 9, 2026)
• CNH agrees to sell 70% of its construction equipment business to Kobelco, filing summary, EdgarTools (Nov. 9, 2026)
• CNH selling 70% of its construction business to Kobelco, forming new JV, Bloomberg via Equipment Finance News (Nov. 9, 2026)
• CNH Industrial N.V. reports third quarter 2026 results, GlobeNewswire (Nov. 9, 2026)
• Robot demand surges as manufacturing expands, American Machinist (Nov. 9, 2026)
• Hexagon completes acquisition of Waygate Technologies, Hexagon (Nov. 2, 2026)

Featured photo: CASE CX240C excavators on display at the 2021 Changsha International Construction Equipment Exhibition. Photo: Huangdan2060, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.