NAV acquires Nexus for $2.8m cash

BRICK, N.J.—In a deal that NAV CEO Jason Oakley says will “double our operational capability and capacity across the tri-state region,” NAV on August 22 announced that it's acquiring Nexus Technologies.

NAV paid $2.8 million cash for Nexus, according to Tom McMillen, CEO of Homeland Security Capital Corporation, the former owner of Nexus.

HSCC had owned Nexus for five years. “We decided to sell Nexus because we're exiting the integration business, it's not core to what we're trying to do,” he said. HSCC is now focusing much of its attention on real estate services, he said.

Oakley said that this acquisition—the first since he became CEO in 2008 when Halifax Group acquired NAV—“accelerates our expansion into new verticals and adds new service clients.”

Since Halifax acquired NAV, a dominant player in the large-scale surveillance market in the gaming industry, the strategy has been to “take our expertise into different markets,” Oakley said.

In the past couple of years NAV has expanded into other verticals and completed some high-profile jobs in various non-gaming verticals such as Red Bull Stadium, Syracuse University and the Denver Regional Transportation Authority. They have also secured a rapidly growing service portfolio including, most recently, over 300 A&P retail locations in the Northeast. Nexus' customer contracts include providing security installation, service and maintenance to more than 22 state buildings in Harrisburg, Pa.; financial services clients; and, utilities such as nuclear power plants.

Nexus has about 30 employees and a particularly strong engineering team, said Robert Biscardi, president of Nexus.

The company also brings capabilities that NAV was lacking, including fire, structured cabling and telephone systems. “Where we overlap is with access control and intrusion and video,” said Biscardi.

Another benefit of the acquisition is Nexus' expertise in service and maintenance, an area that NAV has been working to expand.

“We had no service business three years ago,” Oakley said. “Now we're approaching mid single digits [as a percentage of overall revenues] as the result of this acquisition and other efforts.”

Ideally, Oakley would like to have service and maintenance be about 15 to 20 percent of overall revenues.

In addition to its corporate headquarters here, NAV has offices in Northern and Southern New Jersey; Las Vegas; Austin, Texas; Phoenix; Denver; Arlington, Wash.; and Burbank, Calif. Nexus has offices in Hawthorne, N.Y., Harrisburg, Pa. and Philadelphia.