Break up Federal

[GJM]

I made a comment in passing in the ammo video thread about breaking up Federal. Thinking about it more, I don’t see how shooters are well served by one company owning the Federal, Speer and Remington ammunition businesses. I think shooters would be well served by having more manufacturers and more competition.

Who are the US competitors to Federal? I am not talking about boutique or mom and pop players, but rather large, well capitalized competitors to Federal.

[HCM]

I made a comment in passing in the ammo video thread about breaking up Federal. Thinking about it more, I don’t see how shooters are well served by one company owning the Federal, Speer and Remington ammunition businesses. I think shooters would be well served by having more manufacturers and more competition.

Who are the US competitors to Federal? I am not talking about boutique or mom and pop players, but rather large, well capitalized competitors to Federal.

Winchester and Hornady.

[JRV]

Winchester comes to mind.

Also Hornady. And Sig. I think Browning has or had a smallish ammo operation.

And it’s a little arbitrary to discount the foreign producers that do substantial U.S. consumer market business if you’re talking market share or competition.

[YVK]

You're better positioned to speak from business standpoint but it seems like economies of scale are really hard to overcome these days.

[fatdog]

I think Fiochi has set up a US manufacturing plant in MO some place in addition to their substantial imports. Sig clearly has started an ammo operation but not at the scale of ATK, Winchester, and Hornady.

They may have consolidated a lot of capacity, but I think there is enough competition to prevent an anti-trust case to break them up.

[Spartan1980]

I think Browning has or had a smallish ammo operation.

I think I saw something that said Winchester is making Browning ammo. Don't remember where though. Maybe someone can confirm. I'd bet a six pack of a favorite IPO that Browning just contracts it out. Sig on the other hand makes their own.

[HCM]

I made a comment in passing in the ammo video thread about breaking up Federal. Thinking about it more, I don’t see how shooters are well served by one company owning the Federal, Speer and Remington ammunition businesses. I think shooters would be well served by having more manufacturers and more competition.

Who are the US competitors to Federal? I am not talking about boutique or mom and pop players, but rather large, well capitalized competitors to Federal.

Winchester and Hornady round out the big 3.

SIG is an up and comer. I believe SIG followed their usual pattern, locating their ammo division in Arkansas and poaching Remington ammo employees.

Browning has gotten into the ammo game but I don’t think they actually make their own ammo. I was picking up their 9mm at Academy pretty regularly before COVID. It was decent range ammo.


Then our course the imports - CBC/SB, PPU, Fiocchi, and The Russians. In addition to all the zoo animal ammo (Wolf, golden Tiger, the various bears) with Walmart out of the game Monarch (Academy Sport) and Herters (Cabelas/Basspro) are like the biggest big box brands and they are mostly rebranded Russian steel case or rebranded PPU.

[BehindBlueI's]

I made a comment in passing in the ammo video thread about breaking up Federal. Thinking about it more, I don’t see how shooters are well served by one company owning the Federal, Speer and Remington ammunition businesses. I think shooters would be well served by having more manufacturers and more competition.

Who are the US competitors to Federal? I am not talking about boutique or mom and pop players, but rather large, well capitalized competitors to Federal.

Federal doesn't own any other ammunition companies. It is a subsidiary company of Vista Outdoors, which also holds the other companies as subsidiaries. Federal is more important as a brand then as a producer, and there's really not a lot to "break up" if you look at their facilities. If you mean break up Vista, it's already broken up. They did not merge the production facilities or dismember the companies and reassemble as a conglomerate.

Take a look at Vista Outdoors investor relations material and you'll see one of the risks is they subcontract the production of ammunition to other companies to sell under the Federal brand. One of which was Northrop Grumman from the Lake City plant, but now Winchester has taken that over so I doubt they are selling to Federal like NG was.

By measure of both dollars in sales and in actual physical production, Winchester is significantly larger then Federal is. I *think* Olin Winchester is the biggest US producer now since they got the Lake City plant under their control.

[TGS]

Federal doesn't own any other ammunition companies. It is a subsidiary company of Vista Outdoors, which also holds the other companies as subsidiaries. Federal is more important as a brand then as a producer, and there's really not a lot to "break up" if you look at their facilities.

[sarcasm]But.....but.....but, I want to be outraged over something.[/sarcasm]

[GJM]

Federal doesn't own any other ammunition companies. It is a subsidiary company of Vista Outdoors, which also holds the other companies as subsidiaries. Federal is more important as a brand then as a producer, and there's really not a lot to "break up" if you look at their facilities. If you mean break up Vista, it's already broken up. They did not merge the production facilities or dismember the companies and reassemble as a conglomerate.

Take a look at Vista Outdoors investor relations material and you'll see one of the risks is they subcontract the production of ammunition to other companies to sell under the Federal brand. One of which was Northrop Grumman from the Lake City plant, but now Winchester has taken that over so I doubt they are selling to Federal like NG was.

By measure of both dollars in sales and in actual physical production, Winchester is significantly larger then Federal is. I *think* Olin Winchester is the biggest US producer now since they got the Lake City plant under their control.

Thanks for reminding me, what I should have thought through, is that Federal is just one brand of Vista. I still stand by my original point, that shooters would be better served by vigorous competition by more manufacturers of quality ammunition. Watching the Federal video, you would have never guessed, for example, that Federal steadily increased the price of ammo on its own website throughout the summer.