Boyd & Associates acquires in the desert

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—Boyd & Associates, a security guard and alarm company based here, recently announced the acquisition of Get Alarmed, an Indio, Calif.-based burglar and fire alarm company.

The purchase, which netted Boyd & Associates about 1,600 accounts, achieves synergies and “really makes Boyd & Associates one of the leaders in the Coachella Valley,” said company President Dan Boyd.

The valley, east of the cities of Riverside and San Bernardino, is populated by more than half a million people and includes the desert resort cities of Palm Springs and Palm Desert. Boyd & Associates, founded 45 years ago, has a branch office in Palm Desert and other branches in Oxnard and Santa Ana, as well as its own central station, so it covers most of Southern California, Boyd said.

He said the accounts acquired from Get Alarmed, located in the middle of the valley, were about 60 percent residential. “Get Alarmed was a pretty substantial player in that market,” he said, so acquiring the company “increases our visibility, our stature, our size in the Coachella Valley.” Boyd & Associates has more than 5,000 accounts.

Boyd said there were many synergies in the acquisition. “Because we already have the back office, the accounting, the central station and the inner resources in place, we can just sort of fold in these accounts and continue them along with the other accounts we have in the desert,” he told Security Systems News.

Boyd & Associates, which bills itself as the largest privately owned, full-service security company in Southern California and which focuses mostly on the residential market, describes its guard services as part of “the newest trend in the protection industry.” The company offers a solution in the increasing number of communities where “local police have been reluctant to respond to an alarm signal that has not been verified.” The company's central station can dispatch one of its 600 guards to check out the premises where the alarm signal was generated.

Boyd & Associates, which has about 700 employees, also said its central station can utilize “closed-circuit television to monitor accounts that require that level of protection.”

In a news release, Perry Pastion, owner of Get Alarmed, said he chose to sell to Boyd & Associates because, like Get Alarmed, it's “a family-owned company with a reputation for staying close to its customers.”

Boyd said Get Alarmed also liked the fact that Boyd & Associates has its own central station, “which is important for the people in the Coachella Valley.” Also, he said, Boyd & Associates is well known in the valley, which he described as a “unique area in that there's a lot of guard-gated communities.” His company provides the security guards for those communities, Boyd said.

He declined to reveal the terms of the deal with Get Alarmed.

What goals does Boyd & Associates have for 2013?

“We have the firepower to make an acquisition where we see that it might fit with us … and we do plan to make more acquisitions this year,” Boyd said.

Boyd & Associates in 2011 acquired the assets of Bay Security & Communications of Costa Mesa, Calif.