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The Austin, Texas-based private equity firm announced Monday it had completed its $800 million acquisition of Omnitracs Inc., the fleet management and telematics business it carved out of Qualcomm Inc. And in the same breath, Omnitracs said it had signed an agreement to buy Roadnet Technologies Inc., a Baltimore-based provider of routing and fleet management software.
Qualcomm first announced the sale of Omnitracs in August, agreeing to let Vista purchase the business for $800 million in cash. The deal closed Nov. 25, 2013, giving Vista full ownership of a company that has spent more than two decades building the commercial vehicle telematics industry from the ground up.
Roadnet, which serves private fleets with routing, scheduling, optimization and mobile resource management software, will keep running as a separate division inside Omnitracs rather than be folded into the parent. The structure gives Vista two distinct but complementary businesses under one roof while preserving the customer relationships and product identities each brand has spent years building.
Together, Omnitracs and Roadnet will serve nearly 3,800 customers with more than 500,000 vehicles across more than 60 countries.
Robert Smith, Vista's chief executive, made clear the firm intends to push both companies hard. "We look forward to partnering Omnitracs and Roadnet to form a fleet and mobile resource management platform that will deliver a broad array of best-of-breed solutions for their respective market segments while collaborating on a set of key growth initiatives," he said.
The combined portfolio will cover driver safety, compliance and productivity; operator planning, routing and resource management; and vehicle maintenance and fuel efficiency.
Vista also announced a new leadership team to run the combined operation. John Graham, who most recently served as president of the Security, Government and Infrastructure Division at Intergraph Corp., was named CEO. Before Intergraph, Graham held senior roles at UGS, now part of Siemens PLM, and spent time as a Naval Officer. Jordan Copland, who brings 13 years of senior finance experience including CFO stints at Harbor Freight Tools and GSI Commerce, was named CFO. Copland also spent nine years at the Walt Disney Co. in finance and business development roles.
On the Qualcomm side, the sale marks the end of a 25-year run with a business the chipmaker built from scratch. Derek Aberle, Qualcomm's executive vice president and group president, said the opportunity for fleet management and telematics was evolving rapidly and that Omnitracs was well positioned to lead as a stand-alone entity. Jack Kennedy, who served as president of Omnitracs and helped manage the sale process, is staying with Qualcomm to oversee strategic options for the company's remaining European operations, which were not part of the Vista transaction.
The Roadnet deal is expected to close in December, pending clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act and other standard closing conditions. Evercore advised Vista on the Omnitracs acquisition.
Omnitracs was founded in 1988 and is based in Dallas, Texas. It pioneered the fleet telematics industry and, before the Vista acquisition, served more than 2,500 private and for-hire fleet customers with more than 270,000 vehicles across North America and Latin America.
Vista, which focuses on software and technology-enabled services businesses, is now betting that combining Omnitracs' scale with Roadnet's specialized routing capabilities will give it a platform broad enough to serve fleets of every size, from long-haul trucking operations to regional delivery companies managing tightly timed urban routes.
