A Swedish engineering design home that develops and companies merchandise for patrons within the automotive, medtech, industrial and telecommunications sectors has acquired DragonWave’s Ottawa operations in a bid to bolster its Kanata workplace.
Syntronic introduced this week it is including about two dozen former DragonWave workers within the Nationwide Capital Area to the Stockholm-based agency’s rising North American operations in Kanata. Phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Syntronic opened its Ottawa workplace eight years in the past. Since then, the corporate has expanded to greater than 420 workers who now work out of three separate places in Kanata. The most recent is the previous DragonWave workplace at 362 Terry Fox Dr., simply down the street from Syntronic’s North American headquarters at 340 Terry Fox.
It is the first-ever acquisition for the Swedish agency, which was based in 1983 and has greater than 1,500 workers in eight international locations.
“I believe it says so much about their dedication to Canada and the potential that they see in Canada as a key place for rising R&D companies and restore and after-market companies as nicely,” says Darrell Wellington, Syntronic’s Kanata-based senior vice- president.
“It has been powerful to rent the expertise as a result of lots of people are attempting to try this – which is why this was such acquisition for us.”
Whereas Syntronic has employed greater than 100 employees in Ottawa over the previous 18 months, it nonetheless has greater than 150 R&D positions that stay unfilled as the corporate struggles to search out expert expertise in right this moment’s red-hot tech market.
Bringing DragonWave’s workers into the fold will assist the agency rapidly tackle that scarcity, Wellington says.
“It has been powerful to rent the expertise as a result of lots of people are attempting to try this – which is why this was such acquisition for us,” he explains.
Syntronic’s acquisition of DragonWave’s Canadian operations cements an already robust connection between the 2 firms.
The Swedish agency has been a longtime provider of services to DragonWave and different enterprises owned by DragonWave’s father or mother firm, Dallas-based COMSovereign. Through the years, quite a few high-ranking DragonWave workers have moved on to senior positions at Syntronic Canada, together with VP of engineering Ingrid Magazine, who spent 17 years at DragonWave – together with three years as VP of product improvement – earlier than assuming her present position .
“Lots of our individuals over time have moved to Syntronic they usually favored being there and it was type of a pure match for us,” says DragonWave’s Ottawa-based VP of operations Dave Farrar, who initiated the M&A talks between the 2 companies .
Backhaul merchandise
The deal marks the top of the road for DragonWave in Canada, closing the ebook on what was as soon as considered one of Ottawa’s most distinguished tech companies.
The corporate that makes a speciality of microwave backhaul merchandise that join cellphone towers to service suppliers’ wi-fi networks was a publicly traded agency with greater than $150 million in annual revenues in 2015.
However its revenues plunged to lower than $40 million inside two years after Nokia – which traditionally offered a good portion of DragonWave’s income as an unique gear producer gross sales channel – acquired DragonWave competitor Alcatel-Lucent.
The agency was delisted from the Toronto Inventory Trade in 2017. Later that yr, DragonWave was acquired by Arizona-based Remodel-X, which itself was later aborbed by COMSovereign Holding Corp., a developer of superior communications methods that trades on the Nasdaq trade .
Right now, DragonWave’s prospects embrace Bell, Rogers and Telus, in addition to international telecom suppliers akin to Britain’s Vodafone. Its US operations will stay beneath COMSovereign’s management.
Farrar and Wellington say they anticipate the 2 firms to proceed to work intently collectively to construct out DragonWave’s present product line. Wellington additionally sees alternatives to faucet into DragonWave’s experience in manufacturing and repairing present telecom elements, companies that Syntronic presently would not present in Canada.
“This helps us try this with an present buyer base, after which we will add a bunch of latest prospects in North America with that group being the bottom,” he says.
In the meantime, Syntronic, which opened a design home in Montreal final yr, continues to develop its Canadian operations at a brisk tempo.
The corporate expects to open an workplace within the Higher Toronto Space shortly and plans to maintain including to its Kanata footprint, Wellington says, noting that demand for the group’s R&D and design companies has skyrocketed through the pandemic.
“Lots of tech firms, particularly in telecom and even automotive and industrial, have a whole lot of stress to get new merchandise on their roadmaps and in some instances their engineering groups won’t be performing as effectively as they used to as a result of many individuals are working from dwelling,” he explains.
“We intend to maintain (hiring) … and even pace it up if we will.”