F.E. Moran expands into Kansas and Indiana with acquisitions

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—F.E. Moran has completed two acquisitions that expand its footprint into Kansas and Indiana, boost its national accounts business, and bring in key personnel that CEO Brett Bean predicted will help the company pass a major milestone in the next 18 months.

“In the past two to three months we have grown substantially, added 12,000 accounts to the 22,000 we had, so we're at the 34,000 account marker,” Bean said. “We have approximately $875,000 in RMR, and we expect to surpass $1 million in RMR by the end of 2013.”

F.E. Moran acquired Myers Protection Services of Indianapolis and SNC Security Systems of Hutchinson, Kan. The SNC buy includes 8,000 new accounts, which are divided among a number of key national accounts.

 “It'll bulk up our national account program, but equally important is that it brings the staff needed to undertake that work,” Bean said. The deal includes “35 experienced people who are now part of our staff promoting and servicing national accounts.”  

F.E. Moran will now service national accounts out of its office in Kansas, as well as its national accounts office in Michigan. It first got into the national accounts business with the March 2011 acquisition of Synergy Systems.

Before the acquisition, SNC operated its own central station. The operations of that central have been integrated into F.E. Moran's existing wholesale monitoring operation, Digital River Monitoring, in Champaign, Ill.

However, Bean said F.E. Moran plans to build and launch a new central station in Hutchinson near the end of 2012. The Hutchinson central will be used as a “load-balancing central station,” he said. The company also has a disaster recovery site in Michigan.  

The former owner of Myers Protection Services, David L. Myers, will stay on to run the Indianapolis office and is charged with growing the platform organically and through acquisitions.

“David is a young guy who is aggressive and shares our growth philosophy,” Bean said. “He is teeing up future acquisitions.”

The Myers deal brings with it 3,000 accounts, 75 percent of which are residential.

“We're providing capital to make a big splash in the market,” Bean said, adding that F.E. Moran has learned a lot from the process of integrating Myers' accounts. A very high percentage of those accounts use interactive services from Honeywell or Alarm.com, he said, and “we really like that.”

“We believe in a short time frame, three years or so, we'll double the base of accounts … especially as we bring our commercial expertise into the equation,” he said. “There are a lot of opportunities in that market.”

As Bean has told SSN before, the company goal is to be among the top 20 alarm companies by 2020. He estimates that F.E. Moran will need about $3.5 million in RMR to do that, and he believes the company is well on its way to achieving that goal.