" Anyone care to name another company that does its own...

" Anyone care to name another company that does its own manufacturing and doesn't sell what it produces....and instead uses what it produces to provide a service to others?"

Adent interesting question, here are my thoughts.

Yes, Tesla, Waymo, GM, Ford and a couple other car manufacturers have some plans of building autonomous cars for their own ride share fleet. These fleets will offer a ride service (Wall as a Service) to customers and provide the companies revenue from a product they developed. Why is this important? Because with the rise of Uber, companies are betting that customers know longer want to own a car and would rather hail a ride service then invest large amount of capital. Who better than the manufacturer of the product to oversee such a service, they control and maximize the asset. Maximum up-time, minimum repair costs, trained staff and consistent revenue streams. With the rise of this business model (less cars needed) and new electric car companies taking old car companies market share, expect a couple car companies to not survive the next 10 years. 

Similarly, as a new company developing construction equipment technology it makes sense to not choose the old way (CAT). CAT uses a seed, grow and harvest model. They sow the seed (sell machines every year), over time they grow ( their market share) and harvest revenue from (part sales, subscriptions and dealer services). Choosing CAT's model makes you susceptible to reverse engineering and cheap Chinese knockoffs. Instead they chose to keep the tech in house, align themselves with brick manufacturers and take on the market place. For people who never understood this stock (there are many), it may look like something bad is happening. On the contrary, this model may have saved FBR and second I do believe that the decision for CAT and FBR to split was actually mutual.

Though it may not look like it today, FBR has a future. Get your popcorn ready!

First time poster be kind.