Calian CFO Patrick Houston Discusses a New Acquisition and Expansion into the US Market

Calian has been on an aggressive growth path, both through organic growth and mergers and acquisitions.

With the news that Calian has signed a definitive agreement to acquire US-based Computex, a publicly traded company, Calian begins its expansion into the US IT market.

The $38 million acquisition—expected to add $75 million in annual business and another $30 million in recurring revenue—is the company’s largest to date. It continues the rapid expansion of the IT group, beginning with the addition of iSecurity and Dapasoft last year.

Listen to Calian CFO, Patrick Houston, talk about what the acquisition means for Calian—and the company’s aggressive growth strategy—in the first nine minutes of this City News Ottawa segment with Sam Laprade.

Computex is based in Houston, with operations across Florida and in Minnesota. This important acquisition adds 200 skilled employees to the Calian workforce and represents a significant expansion of IT services throughout Canada and the US.

“Calian has been a story that people don’t know well enough,” says Patrick Houston, Calian CFO. “We’ve been in business for 30 years in Kanata but have been growing aggressively in the past couple of years.” After this transaction Calian will reach approximately $700 million in annual revenue, on its way to becoming a billion-dollar company.

Calian has been on an aggressive growth path, both through organic growth and mergers and acquisitions. “It’s great to see, in Kanata, a public company growing at this pace and investing to grow,” says Houston. “It means a lot of jobs in Kanata both for the head office as well as the support functions.”

Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, Calian has achieved record revenue and profitability during the past two years, due to the critical nature of the products and services the company provides.

Calian Health stepped in to help both the federal and provincial governments in the early days of Covid, providing vaccination clinics across Ontario. Calian Advanced Technologies, with advanced capabilities in satellite communications, assured the provision of internet services, which are critical to effective communication during a time when much of the world has switched to virtual.

“The next fork in the road is to get to a billion-dollar business,” says Houston. “We could do that in the next two to three years, given the pace we’re going at.” But there’s no plan to stop there, he says.

Listen to the full interview (first nine minutes of the broadcast) here.