Redstone shrugging off 'baggage of the past' with Connect IB deal
Software application developer bought for £1.3m
Managed services provider Redstone has made good on its acquisition pledge, announcing a planned acquisition of smart building player Connect IB, in a deal its CEO said "helps to shrug off the baggage of the past".
Connect IB provides software applications for smart buildings and counts pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline and real estate player Meyer Bergman among its customers.
Last month Mark Braund, the recently appointed CEO of Redstone - the sole remaining operating division of Coms - told CRN he is on the acquisition path. And today the firm announced a deal worth £1.3m for Connect IB.
Braund (pictured) told CRN the deal helps to distance Redstone from its legacy issues.
"This is beginning to shrug off the baggage of the past," he said. "We have removed all of our baggage bar the fact we are in the process of trying to exit from the extra property we have in Stokenchurch. But in terms of commercial relationships, as Redstone, and complement that with Connect IB, we have a business that is entirely focused around our strategy."
Following the deal, Connect IB's offices will remain open and there will be no job cuts to its 32 staff, Braund said.
He added that Connect IB's software will provide a very "complementary" offering to Redstone's own software, OneSpace, which is an office occupancy management application tool.
The products from the two firms will sit alongside each other under one software division within Redstone, which Braund imagined would "be called something like Redstone Connect". Keith Jump, Connect IB's former managing director will become Redstone's new CTO.
Braund said he is relishing the prospect of bringing the two firms together.
"Our aim, in pretty short fashion, is to integrate the OneSpace technology into their [Connect IB's] very robust SaaS-ready, multi-tenanted platform, thereby giving OneSpace the extra capability we are looking to develop," he said. "At the same time it gives us the ability to cross-sell OneSpace into Connect IB's customers, and [to sell] Connect IB's very impressive intellectual property into the customers of Redstone."
To fund the acquisition, Redstone placed 223,214,286 new ordinary shares which raised £3.1m. Braund said the company is now in a healthy financial position.
"We have a well-supported fund raise among institutions," he said. "We have added important institutions to our share register and as a result of the fund raise, we have strengthened the balance sheet, which I think is important to anyone looking at Coms plc as an investment opportunity."
When asked if there could be more acquisitions, Braund said the firm wants to continue to grow organically and any purchases it makes would be strategic and for the benefit of shareholders.