Watts Water Technologies Acquires HF Scientific, Inc

Business Wire, Jan 5, 2005

NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. -- Watts Water Technologies, Inc. (NYSE symbol "WTS") announced today that it has acquired HF Scientific, Inc. located in Fort Myers, Florida, in a stock purchase transaction.

HF Scientific, Inc. manufactures and distributes a line of instrumentation equipment, test kits and chemical reagents used for monitoring water quality in a variety of applications. HF Scientific has approximately $5 million in annual revenue.

Watts Water Technologies' Chief Executive Officer, Patrick S. O'Keefe, commented, "The acquisition of HF Scientific represents our entry into the water monitoring market. The products of HF Scientific are consistent with our theme of water quality and provide many synergistic opportunities when utilized in conjunction with our filtration and other water quality businesses. HF Scientific's products include devices to measure turbidity and for monitoring other parameters such as residual chlorine, streaming current and UV percentage transmission. Their product offering represents a comprehensive line of on-line continuous monitoring instruments, as well as instrumentation for laboratory and field use."

Watts Water Technologies, Inc. is a world leader in the manufacture of innovative products to control the efficiency, safety, and quality of water within residential, commercial, and institutional applications. Its expertise in a wide variety of water technologies enables it to be a comprehensive supplier to the water industry.

This Press Release includes statements that are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements reflect Watts Water Technologies' current views about future results of operations and other forward-looking information. In some cases you can identify these statements by forward-looking words such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "should," "will" and "would" or similar words. You should not rely on forward-looking statements because Watts' actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of a number of important factors. These factors include, but are not limited to, the following: shortages in and pricing of raw materials and supplies including recent cost increases by suppliers of raw materials and our ability to pass these costs on to customers, loss of market share through competition, introduction of competing products by other companies, pressure on prices from competitors, suppliers, and/or customers, diversion of management's attention and costs associated with efforts to comply with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, failure to meet the new requirements under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in a timely manner, the identification and disclosure of material weaknesses in our internal controls over financial reporting, failure to expand our markets through acquisitions, failure or delay in developing new products, lack of acceptance of new products, failure to manufacture products that meet required performance and safety standards, foreign exchange rate fluctuations, cyclicality of industries, such as plumbing and heating wholesalers and home improvement retailers, in which the Company markets certain of its products, economic factors, such as the levels of housing starts and remodeling, impacting the markets where the Company's products are sold, manufactured, or marketed, environmental compliance costs, product liability risks, the results and timing of the Company's manufacturing restructuring plan, changes in the status of current litigation, including the James Jones case, and other risks and uncertainties discussed under the heading "Certain Factors Affecting Future Results" in the Watts Water Technologies, Inc. Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2003 filed with the Securities Exchange Commission and other reports Watts files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.