Houlihan Lokey Advises Flow Control Holdings

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Flow Control Holdings (FCH), a portfolio company of Audax Private Equity (Audax), has agreed to be acquired by Blackstone.

FCH is a leading U.S.-based provider of highly engineered flow control solutions and components for the data center liquid cooling, food, beverage, and pharmaceutical markets. FCH designs and manufactures a comprehensive portfolio of highly engineered, high-performance components that are used by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and hyperscalers for coolant distribution units (CDUs), in-row manifolds, and secondary fluid networks (SFNs). Leveraging advanced in-house manufacturing capabilities, design-for-manufacturability expertise, and deep customer partnerships, FCH delivers differentiated solutions tailored to demanding and mission-critical applications. FCH combines an established position across regulated food, beverage and pharmaceutical applications with a differentiated data center platform that holds first-fit positions with major OEMs and hyperscalers, capitalizing on accelerating AI-related infrastructure build-outs and next-generation liquid cooling adoption.

Headquartered in Boston, with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, and Hong Kong, Audax is a leading private equity platform focused on investing across the North American middle market. Audax’s objective is to accelerate value creation through its Buy & Build strategy and the Audax Value Agenda™, a holistic framework that seeks to enable, create, and protect value across every stage of the investment lifecycle. As of July 2026, Audax has approximately $20 billion of assets under management and, since inception in 1999, has invested in more than 180 platforms and more than 1,500 add-on acquisitions.

Blackstone is the world’s largest alternative asset manager. Blackstone seeks to deliver compelling returns for institutional and individual investors by strengthening the companies in which the firm invests. Blackstone’s $1.3+ trillion in assets under management include global investment strategies focused on real estate, private equity, credit, infrastructure, life sciences, growth equity, secondaries, and hedge funds. The acquisition of FCH marks the latest in a series of investments for Blackstone that look to leverage its global scale and deep domain expertise across the high-growth data center ecosystem to further FCH’s continued market leadership and technological differentiation amid record customer demand.

This transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

Houlihan Lokey served as financial advisor to FCH and assisted in marketing, structuring, and negotiating the transaction on FCH’s behalf. This transaction highlights Houlihan Lokey’s continued market leadership across flow-control and data center infrastructure products.

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