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Strategy

ADI Global Distribution is Finally on Its Own. Now Comes the Hard Part

Fresh off its Resideo spin-off and NYSE debut, ADI CEO Rob Aarnes laid out the distributor’s next challenge: turn years of acquisitions and systems investment into a simpler, more integrated business. His playbook — consolidate platforms, clean the data and deploy AI where ROI is measurable — offers lessons far beyond ADI. We cover it here in detail.

September 14, 2026

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For years, Rob Aarnes and his leadership team at ADI Global Distribution had a running thought: maybe today would finally be the day the distributor became its own company.

ADI had spent decades operating inside much larger manufacturing organizations — first Honeywell and, beginning in 2018, Resideo Technologies. Its leaders knew the businesses could eventually separate, Aarnes recalled, but had no certainty over when.

“We get up every day. Maybe this is the day we actually spin out and become our own publicly traded company,” Aarnes recalled his team routinely telling one another.

On Aug. 4…

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