Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

Why should you, a financially-literate decision-maker, pay attention to Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR), a small-cap industrial player with a November 2025 market capitalization of just $8.7 million? Because this seemingly tiny firm, a North American leader in rivets and assembly equipment, just delivered a massive turnaround, reporting a 91.3% surge in gross profit to $1.33 million in the third quarter of 2025. This kind of dramatic shift-going from a significant loss to a net income of $67,572 in a single quarter-highlights the defintely overlooked operational leverage in their core fastener and assembly equipment segments. What does this profitability pivot mean for a business with a current ratio of 7.23 and a TTM revenue of $26 million?

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) History

You need to understand a company's roots to gauge its resilience, especially one like Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) that has navigated over a century of industrial change. The company's story is one of consistent, specialized manufacturing, starting with a simple fastener and evolving into a critical supplier of complex cold-formed parts and assembly equipment for major industries.

Given Company's Founding Timeline

Year established

1920

Original location

The company began operations in the Chicago area, focused on manufacturing brake lining and harness rivets for the burgeoning automotive and industrial markets. The original facility was later consolidated in 1980.

Founding team members

The company was founded by the grandfather of John Morrissey, who currently serves as the Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. While the founder's first name is not widely publicized, the family connection underscores a long-term, continuity-driven ownership structure.

Initial capital/funding

As a company founded in 1920, the initial capital came from private sources, likely family or local investors, to fund the first manufacturing operations. Unlike modern startups, there is no public record of a formal initial funding round, and the company has historically used its own capital and debt for growth.

Given Company's Evolution Milestones

The company's trajectory shows a clear pattern: start with a product, build the machine to set it, and then expand the manufacturing footprint. Here's the quick math on their key shifts:

Given Company's Transformative Moments

A few decisions truly shaped the modern Chicago Rivet & Machine Co., moving it from a regional supplier to a specialized national player. These moments define the company's focus on operational efficiency and its deep ties to the US industrial base.

• The WWII Production Pivot: During World War II, the company was a pivotal supplier, earning commendations from the U.S. government for producing fasteners used in aircraft wings and munitions. This experience cemented its role as a critical, high-quality supplier to large, demanding organizations.
• The Consolidation to Tyrone, PA: The 1946 decision to open a facility in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, and the subsequent 1980 closure of the original Chicago-area facility, made Tyrone the primary manufacturing hub for all fasteners and assembly equipment. This centralizing move focused resources and expertise.
• The 2024/2025 Operational Streamlining: The recent decision to consolidate the Albia operations into the Tyrone facility is a classic move to improve margins in a tough environment. This action contributed directly to the Q3 2025 financial turnaround, which saw operating income jump to $64,570 from a prior-year loss of $823,571. That's defintely a clear action with a clear result.

The company's success today hinges on its ability to maintain this cost discipline while capitalizing on its specialized cold-formed parts and assembly equipment segments. If you want to dig deeper into who is betting on this turnaround, you should be Exploring Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) Ownership Structure

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) maintains a highly concentrated ownership structure for a public company, with a small float and significant holdings by insiders and institutions. This setup means strategic decisions are heavily influenced by a few key stakeholders, including the largest individual shareholder, John A. Morrissey, who holds a notable stake.

Given Company's Current Status

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. is a publicly held corporation, trading under the ticker CVR on the NYSE American (NYSEAM) exchange. As of November 2025, the company's financial footprint is relatively small, with a market capitalization of approximately $8.7 million and a total of 966,132 common shares outstanding. The company's status as a micro-cap stock means its share price, which was trading around $9.00 as of November 7, 2025, can be defintely volatile. You can read more about the company's financial health here: Breaking Down Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Given Company's Ownership Breakdown

The company's ownership is split primarily between institutional investors, company insiders, and the public float, which represents the remaining shares available for trading. Here's the quick math on the breakdown using the latest available data from the 2025 fiscal year filings:

Given Company's Leadership

The company is steered by a small, experienced leadership team that manages both the operational and financial aspects of the business. The Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, which includes CEO Gregory D. Rizzo and Director James W. Morrissey, holds significant authority, having all the power of the full Board except as required by law.

• Gregory D. Rizzo: Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Director. He is responsible for the overall strategic direction and management of the company.
• Michael J. Bourg: President, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Treasurer, and Director. He oversees day-to-day administrative and operational functions, including production and supply chain.
• Joel M. Brown: Chief Financial Officer (CFO). He manages the company's financial health, including accounting, budgeting, and capital management.
• James T. Tanner: Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing. Appointed on May 1, 2025, he is tasked with driving revenue generation and expanding the market reach, especially in non-automotive fastener sales.

The Board of Directors also includes independent directors who oversee key functions like the Audit and Nominating committees. The Executive Committee met eleven times in 2024, showing their active role in governance. That's a lot of meetings for a small company.

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) Mission and Values

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) anchors its century-long presence in the industrial world on a clear, no-nonsense commitment to manufacturing excellence and customer-focused reliability. This operational DNA, more than any glossy statement, is what has kept the company profitable, reporting a Q3 2025 net income of $67,572, a significant turnaround from the prior year.

To be fair, CVR isn't a modern tech firm that spends millions on branding; their values are forged in steel and precision, not marketing slides. Still, you need to know what drives the organization beyond the bottom line, so let's look at their core purpose.

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co.'s Core Purpose

CVR's purpose is simple: deliver the highest-quality fastening solutions to demanding industries like automotive and general manufacturing, a mission that requires constant process improvement. This focus on quality control and efficiency is defintely critical, especially as they navigate a challenging market, which saw nine-month 2025 net sales land at $21,903,997.

Official mission statement

The company's formal mission is a direct reflection of its industrial roots and its commitment to its customer base. It's about precision and value, which is exactly what a buyer of specialized cold-formed parts needs.

• Provide customers with the highest quality products at a competitive price.
• Comply with all customer requirements as a foundational standard.
• Continually strive to improve the quality management system.

Vision statement

While CVR doesn't publish a separate, formal vision statement, its long operational history and strategic actions map out a clear future focused on enduring industrial relevance. The vision is to be the indispensable partner for integrated fastening solutions in North America.

• Sustain a leading position in the North American fastener industry, leveraging a history that began in 1920.
• Maintain operational efficiency through strategic consolidation, like moving the Albia operations into the Tyrone, Pennsylvania, facility.
• Drive profitability through high-margin, specialized engineering, evidenced by the 91.3% surge in Q3 2025 gross profit.

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. slogan/tagline

The company's operational history serves as its most powerful tagline, emphasizing decades of proven reliability and expertise in a highly technical field. It's a statement of fact, not a marketing flourish.

• We've been supporting industry since 1920 - let us help you with your assembly needs.
• Rely on our engineering expertise to fulfill and exceed your most challenging fastening requirements.

If you want to map CVR's financial performance against these foundational values, you need to dig into the details. Breaking Down Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors is a good place to start.

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) How It Works

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. operates as a dual-segment industrial manufacturer, producing both the fasteners (rivets and cold-formed parts) and the specialized machinery required to install them, which is a powerful, integrated model.

The company essentially sells the ammunition and the gun, allowing them to capture value at two critical points in the manufacturing supply chain, a strategy that helped drive Q3 2025 net income to a positive $67,572, a significant swing from the prior year's loss. Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR).

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co.'s Product/Service Portfolio

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co.'s Operational Framework

The company's operations are split into two complementary manufacturing streams, which is how they defintely create value: the high-volume production of fasteners and the specialized, lower-volume engineering of machines.

The core process starts with cold-forming, a highly efficient metalworking technique that uses pressure to shape metal wire into complex fasteners like rivets and cold-formed parts, minimizing waste compared to machining. This is a critical cost-saver. The assembly equipment side then designs and builds the automatic machines that use these fasteners, which are often custom-made for a client's specific assembly line.

• Facility Consolidation: A major cost-saving move in 2024 and 2025 involved consolidating the Albia operations into the Tyrone, Pennsylvania, manufacturing facility. This streamlined workflows, increased capacity utilization, and helped reduce overhead.
• Margin Improvement: The operational efficiencies, plus the realization of price increases implemented in 2024 and 2025, pushed the year-to-date (YTD) Gross Profit Margin up substantially by 5.2 percentage points, from 12.5% to 17.5%.
• Profitability Turnaround: Here's the quick math on the impact: Q3 2025 Operating Income swung to a positive $64,570, a massive improvement from the $823,571 operating loss in Q3 2024.

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co.'s Strategic Advantages

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co.'s market success hinges on its integrated, two-pronged approach and its deep entrenchment in a demanding industry.

• Integrated Solution Provider: By manufacturing both the fastener and the machine that sets it, the company offers a single-source system, which reduces complexity and risk for major customers like those in the North American automotive sector. This is a sticky, high-barrier-to-entry business model.
• Non-Automotive Diversification: Recognizing the volatility of its primary market, a strategic focus on expanding outside automotive is underway. YTD 2025 fastener sales to non-automotive customers increased by 9.3%, generating an incremental $603,000 in revenue and starting to validate the new sales strategy.
• Custom Engineering Expertise: The decades-long history in the fastener industry translates to deep expertise in material science, cold-forming, and heat-treatment processes. This allows them to engineer custom fastening solutions that meet the highly specific, high-precision requirements of aerospace and defense clients, which are hard for competitors to replicate.

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) How It Makes Money

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) generates revenue by providing integrated fastening solutions, primarily through the manufacturing and sale of industrial fasteners-rivets and cold-formed parts-and the specialized automatic machinery used to install them.

The core of the business is selling highly-engineered, application-specific rivets and fasteners, which creates a recurring revenue stream, while the sale of the rivet setting equipment provides a higher-margin, though more cyclical, capital equipment component.

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co.'s Revenue Breakdown

The company operates in two distinct segments, with the Fastener segment contributing the vast majority of net sales. For the first nine months of the 2025 fiscal year, ending September 30, 2025, total net sales were $21,903,997. Here is the breakdown:

Business Economics

The company's economic engine is deeply tied to the cyclical nature of the North American automotive industry, which is the primary market for its high-volume fastener products. More than 80% of the revenue from its H & L Tool subsidiary is linked to automotive supply contracts, making it highly sensitive to Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) production levels.

The pricing strategy is a mix of cost-plus and value-based, focused on maintaining margin in a high-inflation environment. The significant increase in the year-to-date (YTD) Gross Profit Margin to 18.1% is a direct result of implementing price increases across 2024 and 2025, plus realizing operational efficiencies from the 2024 closure and consolidation of the Albia, Iowa facility.

• Core Market Volatility: Fastener sales to automotive customers declined 9.0% YTD 2025, a clear sign of the slowdown in North American vehicle production.
• Strategic Diversification: The company is executing a pivot, with non-automotive fastener sales increasing by 9.3% YTD, generating an incremental $603 thousand in revenue.
• Equipment Cyclicality: The Assembly Equipment segment is highly cyclical, with sales declining 12.3% YTD 2025, as large capital expenditure purchases by customers are easily delayed.

Here's the quick math: The margin improvement is a clear win, but the core automotive volume is still a headwind. You can delve deeper into who is investing in this turnaround story at Exploring Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co.'s Financial Performance

The company's financial performance for the first nine months of the 2025 fiscal year shows a critical operational turnaround, but it still faces severe liquidity constraints.

• Profitability Reversal: YTD 2025 Net Income was $73,615, a dramatic swing from a net loss of $2,002,484 in the prior year period. This was partly aided by a one-time gain of $339,520 from the sale of the Albia facility.
• Margin Expansion: Gross Profit for the nine months increased by 38.8%, pushing the Gross Profit Margin from 12.5% in 2024 to 18.1% in 2025. This is defintely the most important operational metric to watch.
• Liquidity Strain: Despite the return to profitability, the company used $1,344,371 in net cash from operating activities YTD 2025. This cash drain is primarily due to a significant buildup in Accounts Receivable, which is consuming cash flow.
• Going Concern Risk: Management explicitly disclosed 'substantial doubt' about the company's ability to continue as a going concern, a serious warning that underscores the fragility of the financial foundation despite the operational improvements.
• Debt and Covenant: The company secured a new $3,000,000 credit facility, with $500,000 drawn on a note payable that requires compliance with a minimum profitability covenant for the full year 2025.

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) Market Position & Future Outlook

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) is a micro-cap player in the North American industrial fastener market, but its recent Q3 2025 results show a critical return to profitability, moving from a 2024 net loss of over $5.6 million to a Q3 2025 net income of $67,572. The company's future hinges on its ability to sustain the operational efficiencies gained from facility consolidation and successfully navigate its heavy reliance on the volatile North American automotive industry.

Competitive Landscape

In the vast industrial fastener market, Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. holds a highly specialized, small-scale position. Its estimated market share is tiny when compared to the $21.42 billion North America industrial fasteners market size in 2025, which underscores the firm's niche focus.

Here's the quick math: with CVR's trailing twelve-month (TTM) revenue at approximately $26 million as of September 30, 2025, its market share is approximately 0.12% of the $21.42 billion North American market. Federal Screw Works, a slightly larger US peer, has TTM revenue of $88.9 million, which shows the scale difference even among smaller US-focused suppliers. You're defintely looking at a micro-cap specialist here.

Opportunities & Challenges

The company's recent operational improvements are a direct result of strategic actions, but significant risks remain, especially given its concentration in the automotive sector, which accounts for the majority of its sales.

Industry Position

Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. is firmly positioned as a micro-cap manufacturer (market capitalization of $8.7 million as of November 7, 2025) specializing in a dual-segment model: fasteners and assembly equipment. The fastener segment is the primary revenue driver, but the proprietary rivet setting machines offer a critical differentiator, locking in customers who need both the fastener and the specialized equipment to apply it.

• Operate at the extreme niche end of the fastener market, focusing on custom, cold-formed parts rather than high-volume commodity products.
• Maintain a high current ratio of 7.23, which indicates strong short-term liquidity, even as overall earnings have been volatile.
• The core challenge is translating Q3 2025's operational income of $64,570 into a sustainable, year-round trend to overcome the historical operating losses.
• The dual-segment model provides a moat: selling the machine makes you the defacto supplier for the specific rivet.

For a deeper dive into the company's financial health and capital structure, you can check out Breaking Down Chicago Rivet & Machine Co. (CVR) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors. Your next step should be to monitor Q4 2025 results for evidence that the operational efficiencies are truly sticking.