ADS Security acquires fifth company this year

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—ADS Security, a super-regional electronic security and automation company based here, has acquired 1,600 customer accounts from Sanders Security of Dothan, Ala., marking its fifth acquisition of the year.

“There is a team of 14 on the staff that are joining us, and I had a chance to meet them and they are great people who are very experienced,” John Cerasuolo, ADS president and CEO, told Security Systems News. “The owner, John Sanders, is staying with us and we are very happy when the owner stays with us because it helps with the continuity of the employees and the customers. John is a wonderful guy and a perfect seller for us because while every seller is interested in the price they are going to get, John and other good sellers that we buy from are equally concerned that their employees and customers are going to be taken care of.”

The purchased account base is 60 percent residential and 40 percent commercial. “[Sanders] had a good mix of residential and commercial, and the commercial is a good mix between some industrial, and some government work—there is an Army base down there that we do a little bit of work at now,” Cerasuolo explained. “We do a pretty good amount of government work in our other branches as well.”

ADS will retain the Sanders Security office, establishing it as the seventh branch location for ADS in the state of Alabama and the 21st branch location companywide.

Geographically speaking, the new office “extends us one step closer to the gulf coast,” said Cerasuolo. “Our furthest south branch prior to this was Auburn, so this kind of gets us halfway between there and the coast, and we hope to fill out the rest of the footprint with more locations on the gulf coast in the years to come.”

The customer accounts will continue to be serviced out of the current Sanders Security office, including the “same team, same great service that their customers have grown to rely on over the last 18 years but now that is also supported by a bigger organization to give them the training and resources that come with that,” said Cerasuolo.

Sanders Security is the fifth purchase for ADS this year, following two acquisitions near Melbourne, Fla. (one of 1,600 accounts and the second of 1,300 accounts); a 3,000-account acquisition in Sanford, N.C.; and a 1,300-account purchase in Northport, Ala. These deals have yielded ADS more than 8,000 purchased accounts year-to-date. In 2015, ADS acquired security companies in Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia totaling approximately 6,500 accounts.

This acquisition marks ADS Security's busiest year on the acquisition side. “The last three years, the pace has been pretty good, but this year will be our biggest in acquisitions, both in number of deals and in number of accounts acquired in those deals,” said Cerasuolo, who expects to close on one more acquisition by year's end, a deal that will most likely be a fold-in with one of the company's existing branches.

ADS, which surpassed the $3 million RMR mark in May, was established in 1990 providing a full range of burglar and fire alarms, as well as video surveillance, access control and automation systems.

The company is focused on growing its commercial sales, which are “doing very well, particularly the fire business, so that is an area that we are concentrating on,” said Cerasuolo. “We are investing in training and developing relationships with the right people in the commercial industries within our markets to build it up the right way, and over time we feel that we have a great opportunity to even more significantly organically grow our commercial business.”