By Calvin Biesecker
KEYW Corp. [KEYW] on Friday said it has acquired JKA Technologies, a provider of information assurance and other information technology services to the intelligence community.
KEYW paid $10.5 million in cash and $2.5 million in shares of its stock for JKA. KEYW expects the deal to be accretive.
The deal further bolsters KEYW’s position serving the intelligence community, adding depth in terms of capabilities and customers. KEYW said that JKA serves one of its larger customers.
“JKA has a strong reputation for performance and mission focus with one of our largest intelligence community customers,” Leonard Moodispaw, president and CEO of KEYW, said in a statement. “They bring both breadth and depth of capabilities and customer relationships as they join KEYW.”
JKA provides program management, information security, systems engineering and network engineering information technology services to its customers. The company had $12.9 million in sales last year and is expected to have sales between $13 million and $14 million in 2009. Most of the company’s work is as a subcontractor. KEYW said that JKA is expected to have earnings in line with similar information technology firms serving the intelligence community.
The acquisition, the 10th for KEYW since its founding in 2008, further builds up the company in terms of size, capabilities and overall resources, which are all critical to one of its goals of boosting its presence as a prime contractor serving the intelligence community. As a prime contractor, the company expects to be able to boost its gross margins and be closer to its customers, helping to guide their efforts, Ed Jaehne, KEYW’s chief strategy officer, told Defense Daily.
KEYW had $108 million in sales in 2010, with 39 percent of the business as a prime contractor. The company now has over 780 employees, including 65 brought with JKA that are cleared at the highest level.
KEYW said that with each acquisition it is “expanding its cyber superiority platform for providing agile solutions to the intelligence and defense community.” Agility means a built-in ability to help its customers respond quickly to events and needs and be forward looking to their needs, Jaehne said.