Birch Communications has just wrapped up its acquisition of Orlando-based Cordia, a deal that will expand its growing service base with the addition of about 55,000 business and residential broadband, long-distance access lines across 24 states.
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Oddo |
To support customers it's getting in the Cordia deal, the CLEC plans to hire a number of new U.S.-based customer representatives.
Chris Aversano, Birch chief operating officer, said that "Many of these jobs were previously located outside the United States, and we take great pride in repatriating these positions back into the U.S."
Cordia is just one of many acquisitions that Birch may make this year and in 2012. Birch president and CEO Vincent Oddo said in a Connected Planet article that the company is striking deals to purchase other CLECs.
"We expect to announce others shortly," he said.
Although much of the competitive M&A action has centered on large deals such as Windstream's (Nasdaq: WIN) impending deal for PAETEC (Nasdaq: PAET), Birch has been no less aggressive having acquired 12 other companies since 2006 as part of what Oddo calls a "tuck in" strategy. This "tuck in" acquisition strategy targets service providers that offer similar services and geographic coverage.
Oddo's acquisition statement should not be all that surprising. At a time when other service providers struggle to get new capital funding, the CLEC secured $77.5 million in new funding from Bank of America to be used for new acquisitions.
For more:
- see the release
- Connected Planet has this article
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