By Calvin Biesecker
Branching out into new product and customer areas, SRA International [SRX] yesterday said it has agreed to acquire Era Corp., a provider of surveillance and flight tracking products for military, security and airport operations with an extensive global customer base.
Terms of the deal will not be disclosed until SRA updates its investors during its August fourth quarter earnings release. The acquisition is subject to regulatory review and is expected to close by the end of June.
Era, a 300 employee company based in Northern Virginia, develops and supplies surveillance and flight tracking products and solutions including multilateration, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and other technologies. Its main products are a cooperative multilateration and ADS-B system that identifies and tracks aircraft, vehicles and other objects equipped with certain transponders, a vehicle location tracking ADS-B transponder used for aviation safety, a passive surveillance air defense system that can also locate and track ground and naval targets, and a Web-based, integrated airport operations management software platform.
SRA declined to disclose Era’s annual sales but a company spokeswoman told Defense Daily that 58 percent of Era’s 2008 revenue is military and security, 35 percent air traffic management and 7 percent airport operations. Era’s 2008 revenue by region is 49 percent from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 44 percent from Asia and the Pacific and 7 percent from the Americas. The vast majority of Era’s revenue comes from product sales, customization and integration, she said.
The acquisition is part of SRA’s five year plan, begun last year, to broaden its product and service offerings, and to increase annual sales and expand operating margins.
“Era is a perfect fit for SRA,” Stan Sloane, SRA president and CEO said in a statement. “They are a global market leader with a solid management team, dedicated employee base and valuable intellectual property. Era has established a great track record of winning new business and exceeding customer expectations, and we anticipate that the air surveillance market will continue to offer abundant opportunities for growth as traditional ground-based radar is replaced by these more powerful, dependable systems. Era is an important part of our long-term growth plans and will help position us strategically for leadership in advanced surveillance technologies.”
Dave Ellison, Era’s president and CEO, said in a statement that growth in the air traffic is expected to double in the next decade and that demand for his company’s surveillance solutions is “growing in step.”
The SRA spokeswoman said that SRA does a small amount of work for the Federal Aviation Administration and has been watching to growth in air traffic and its demand for information technology modernization. She said that SRA has been “looking to get more involved on the mission side of FAA and its international equivalents for years.” She added that Era may benefit from SRA’s customer base in the Defense Department and Department of Homeland Security and that SRA expects to be able to cross sell its IT solutions to Era’s customers worldwide.
BB&T Capital Markets Windsor Group served as Era’s financial advisor on the deal. Era hired BB&T earlier this year to help it evaluate its strategic alternatives.