Stanley buys retail branch business from National Guardian

NAPERVILLE, Ill.--Close on the heels of its announcement of the purchase of Sonitrol June 11, Stanley Convergent Security Solutions announced on June 20 the purchase of the retail branch business from National Guardian Security Services. According to a release, the purchase includes roughly 3,500 residential and commercial accounts concentrated in California, Missouri and Kansas. "This brings us some nice efficiencies," said Tony Byerly, chief operating officer at Stanley CSS. "It gets us some scale in some markets that are important for the growth platform on the organic side of things." Also, said Byerly, who noted that Stanley is now the third largest installation firm in the United States by total revenue, "National Guardian is a well known brand in the marketplace and has a great reputation." George Flagg, chief executive of the original National Guardian business, a $200 million firm sold to SecurityLink then to Cambridge Protection then to ADT, which dropped the National Guardian brand. Flagg began a new dealer program and resurrected the National Guardian brand in 2003. After landing $10 million in capital in 2005, National Guardian purchased Corporate Security Management, of Orlando, Fla.; Strong Alarm, of Kansas City, Mo.; and TVR Service Systems & Engineering, of Auburn, Calif., in 2006 to help the company target national accounts. The company also added full redundancy with the purchase of a second UL-listed central station, Professional Security Monitoring of New York in the fall of 2006. That brought National Guardian to a total of 24,000 monitored accounts. Commenting on the account sale, George Flagg, chief executive officer of National Guardian, said in a prepared statement: "Providing outstanding service to customers has been the focus of every company I have operated. Having Stanley Convergent Security Solutions acquire these key accounts assures me and our customers that they will receive the best on-going service and responsiveness in the alarm industry." So, is Stanley done acquiring for the time being? Byerly wouldn't commit to any plan, but said, "It's safe to say that a company with an RMR component, is commercially focused, and has a good reputation in the industry--that's someone that we would continue to look at."