Titan Alarm finishes year strong with third acquisition

PHOENIX—Titan Alarm, a security, access, fire and surveillance company based here, made its third acquisition of 2016, finishing the year strong with the purchase of accounts and RMR of Arrow Security Design LLC, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company owned and operated by Ray Millazo, who is retiring after more than 30 years in the industry.

Although the deal closed on Sept. 30th, 2016, the acquisition wasn't announced until December. Financial details were not disclosed.

Titan CEO Mike Proudfit said that he was thrilled to be able to work with Millazo, and add accounts within Titan's home turf.

“Ray's customers have been with him for years—he has a great reputation and is well known,” Proudfit told Security Systems News. “And with the hometown location of his customer base, it is an easy bolt-on for our staff—we didn't have to add any new employees or service technicians and it fits in with our current offering.”

Arrow Security Design had an even mix of commercial/residential monitored security accounts sprinkled across old Scottsdale and the greater Phoenix area, and Proudfit said that the location of the account base “was really appealing to us, as it is very focused and centralized in the Phoenix-Scottsdale market, which is where we would like to grow and continue to grow a stronghold in the state.”

Unlike the other two acquisitions that Titan completed in 2016, Proudfit pointed out that this deal “was a pure RMR acquisition, so this was one of our first RMR-only deals, which was kind of neat to do.”

In terms of total RMR, Proudfit said that Titan Alarm ended 2016 with $175,000 in RMR, up from approximately $140,000 at the end of 2015. Titan Alarm also ended 2016 with $3.8 million in total revenue, up from $3.2 million in 2015.

“We had a great year and we are expecting to break $200,000 in RMR by the first part of Q2,” Proudfit said. “Our service revenue more than doubled and almost tripled in 2016, and in terms of net growth, we were able to grow substantially over the previous year with organic growth and acquisitions and our installation revenue was great. We finished the year out strong in December—one of our best months of the year.”

In addition to the acquisitions in 2016, Proudfit said the company was able to generate about $38,000 in RMR organically. “Our organic growth will more than double in 2017 compared with 2016, which is a huge feat to accomplish,” he noted. “We've also got quite a few acquisitions lined up for this year, bigger ones than we were dealing with last year, so it will be a good 2017.”

Beyond the company's strong growth plans, Proudfit said that he is excited about Alarm.com's multi-dwelling unit platform, “which was a great product that they came out with,” he said. “We were trained on the system, and within two to three weeks we closed a $100,000 job with $4,500 a month in RMR. That account, that one customer, is going to add a few more of those types of jobs as well, so we are excited about that new Alarm.com platform and working with apartment complexes.”