Former Vivint CFO on the Alarm.com IPO

Alarm.com's announcement that it will go public has a lot of people talking inside and outside of the security industry. Many of the insiders, however, will not talk on the record, at least not right now.

I was interested in talking to someone who knows IPOs, understands the security industry and is familiar with Alarm.com, and I came up with Chris Black. Black is the former CFO of Vivint who helped Vivint prepare for the sale to Blackstone. He's also helped other companies go public. Today he works outside of the industry as CFO of Viamedia and as a board member of Sports Information Group which owns the Daily Racing Form.

In an email interview Black called Alarm.com "a terrific company with a strong management team that I gained a lot of respect for during my interactions with them while I was at Vivint."

He said an IPO can "have a transformational impact on the business" and a positive affect on the industry.

"The IPO will provide them with access to another source of capital to continue to grow the business and invest in new products and opportunities. I also think it is a great event for the security industry as a whole. It serves as further validation of the space and will bring in new equity investors that may or may not have looked at security companies in the past,"

The only potential downside, Black said "is the amount of time the management team, particularly the CEO and CFO, are required to spend on investor relations activities including calls with equity analysts, investors and presentations at equity conferences and the like."

How might the IPO affect customers?

"This is really just another form of financing the growth of the business and shouldn't have an immediate impact on Alarm.com's customers one way or the other. Longer term, one could assume that access to public equity will allow the company to invest in the business and continue to develop new products and enhance existing ones either organically or through acquisitions, or both," he said.