ADT closes Protectron acquisition

The ADT Corporation announced yesterday that it has closed its acquisition of Canadian monitoring giant Protectron.

ADT, which executed a definitive agreement to acquire Reliance Protectron in April, acquired the company for total cash consideration of CAD $555 million.

ADT has now officially added 400,000 customers and 31,000 accounts north of the border, worth approximately $11 million in RMR.

ADT, which already has two central stations in Canada, adds four more through the acquisition. Protectron, a portfolio company of investment funds managed by Alinda Capital Partners, has 900 employees. Its customer base is 75 percent residential.

ADT's plan, as stated at the time it agreed to acquire the company, is to use the acquisition as the platform for a stand-alone business in Canada with a dedicated management team, a move designed to address the country's specific market needs. In a news release, ADT said it planned to continue to using the Protectron brand under ADT ownership.

In late April, following the acquisition agreement, Lee Jackson, regional VP Canada, said it was too early to say whether ADT would keep all six Canadian central stations in operation. He noted that ADT has yet to determine which resources and administrative functions it will transfer to Canada to supports its expanded account base in that country, now up to 800,000.

The acquisition goes down as ADT's largest since becoming an independent company, far surprassing its 2013 Devcon deal, according to John Mack, EVP and managing director at Imperial Capital, who spoke to SSN when the agreement to acquire became public. At the time, Mack said the deal signals a return to “growth initiatives [through] high quality acquisitions” and predicted the deal would help ADT's attrition profile while bolstering its enhanced services sales.

It will be interesting to wait and see if Mack's words prove to be prophetic.