Xentry acquires Acree Daily Integrated Systems

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Systems integrator Xentry Systems expects to hit $25 million to $27 million in revenue in 2014, thanks in part to the acquisition, announced May 21, of Acree Daily Integrated Systems, an integrator based here.

“Our management vision is to build this big,” Matrix Systems CEO Holly Tsourides told Security Systems News. “Everything we do now—hiring talent, with our capital structure, [improving systems such as] bringing in a new ERP—[is so] we have room to grow into the infrastructure. …We have the appetite to grow to be a very large super-regional.”

This is the first major acquisition for Xentry, which was created in January when Matrix split its business into two separate P&Ls, access control manufacturer Matrix and systems integration firm Xentry.

“Xentry had the framework to be a good service organization servicing the legacy Matrix [customers],” Tsourides told SSN. “What we were missing is the capability to service products outside of the Matrix portfolio.”

“Today we only sell our own product line, but [with Acree Daily] we now have qualified people to who are trained in the premier video and access lines.”

Xentry now has four Ohio locations: Miamisburg, where parent company Matrix is based; Cleveland, which Tsourides said “has a strong team on the ground, technicians, sales, accounting”; Columbus, the former Acree headquarters which will become the “hub for Xentry”; and Cincinnati, where Acree has a second office.

Acree brings with it 45 employees. Dan Blend, former owner of Acree Daily Integrated Systems, will become regional president for the Ohio region of Xentry.

The majority of Acree's customers are within a 150-mile radius of Columbus, and because many Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Columbus, the company has several national accounts.

In the past, national companies have expressed interest in acquiring Acree, but Blend said he was not interested in having a company come in and “take your sign down and put theirs up.” With Xentry, his employees will stay in place. “We'll be a different company, but we'll be better, we'll be able to grow, be better trained,” he said.

The four offices will provide “a nice established regional base to take care of customers efficiently,” he said.

Acree brings fire capability. It is an EST fire dealer, an Ascom nurse call dealer and an AMAG dealer.

Acree and Xentry share specialization in health care. About 40 percent of Xentry's revenues are derived from the health care vertical, while Acree derives about 35 percent of its revenues from health care work.

Tsourides said Xentry has witnessed firsthand Acree's capabilities because they have many customers in common. “We would be leaving after servicing [a customer's] access control and Dan would walk in to take care of cameras, fire and intrusion.”

“We knew we had to build or buy those capabilities,” Tsourides said. And when she sat down with Blend, “it became clear they had all the talent we need.”

The best element of this deal, Tsourides said, is the “breadth and depth we'll be able to offer in terms of servicing the clients.” She likes where Xentry will sit as a $25-$27 million integrator with four locations in Ohio. From her perspective, many smaller integrators with less than $10m in revenue “don't have the depth to build out a national organization. … And, on the other end of the spectrum you have the large nationals. They have the footprint, but they don't measure themselves according to client satisfaction. We have the size to service our clients better than anyone else moving forward.”