Computex Charts Course To Be A $1 Billion Solution Provider As It Agrees To Be Acquired By Pensare

‘It’s very exciting to do this deal. We’re not getting acquired by a company that is going to change who we are. It’s a financial transaction that maintains our identity and maintains our management team and just gives us the ability to grow exponentially,’ Computex CEO Sam Haffar tells CRN.

Houston-based solution provider Computex Technology Solutions scored a huge win when it said Thursday that it had agreed to be purchased for $65 million by Pensare Acquisition in a move that Computex CEO Sam Haffar said will open the door to “grow exponentially.”

“It’s very exciting to do this deal. We’re not getting acquired by a company that is going to change who we are,” Haffar told CRN. “It’s a financial transaction that maintains our identity and maintains our management team and just gives us the ability to grow exponentially.”

Haffar said in today’s market, consolidation is becoming table stakes for companies that want to stay ahead. Computex—No. 117 on the 2019 CRN Solution Provider 500—said this week that it had achieved Cisco Gold Quad Master status, a designation that fewer than 10 companies in the world have been awarded.

“You have to have scale,” he told CRN. “You have to have multiple, hundreds of millions to get scale with OEMs, to get scale with customers, to just maintain your edge. To be a Cisco Gold Quad Master, you can’t do that as a small VAR. It’s not attainable. You have to have the facilities. You have to have the NOC, the SOC, the people, the process. You can’t be that as a $50 million VAR.”

In a statement, Pensare Acqusistion said it will acquire Computex for an aggregate of approximately $65 million in cash, stock and assumed debt, subject to certain adjustments contained in the agreement. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2019.

“We are excited about the acquisition of Computex, which we believe is an excellent platform on which to build the premier provider of cloud-managed unified communications IT solutions,” said Darrell Mays, CEO of Pensare. “We intend to provide these companies with the capital, expertise and runway they need to capture significant share of this market, particularly businesses with multiple locations.”

Haffar said the deal gives Computex the ability to become a public company and have the funding and public market to become a billion-dollar solution provider. He said the company, its name, and management—including his position as CEO—will remain in place.

“One goal is to grow organically by adding team members in all our geographies. Then we’re going to aggressively look at acquisitions in geographies that we’re not in and in some complementary offerings,” he said. “Really a win-win.”

The other advantage of the deal will be winning top technologists and engineers through acquisitions, with the goal of “getting the right talent and keeping them forever.” He said Computex has a good track record of giving talent the tools they need to “let them run.”

“Right now we’re at a couple hundred people,” he said. “We’re continuing to add people organically. Depending on who we acquire, it could grow significantly. We’re already looking at a couple potential companies and it could easily add 300 or 400 people to our teams.”

As far as what those targets are, Haffar said the company is looking at opportunities for upselling and cross- selling, as well as specific capabilities inside the companies.

“Maybe it’s security, maybe it’s cloud, maybe it’s consulting,” he said. “We’re going to look for complementary product sets and service sets. Our managed services business continues to grow. We have two 24x7 NOCs we have a 24x7 SOC. That business is growing rapidly. So we’re going to look for companies that have a good, balanced mix of project business that we do, the data center transformation business that we do—hyper-converged, enterprise networking, all of the stuff near and dear to our hearts.. Then we have a very strong cloud business, or managed service business, and we want to continue to grow that.”