Parsons Corp. [PSN] on Monday said it has agreed to acquire QRC Technologies
for $215 million in cash in a deal that expands its work in the defense and intelligence markets and its offerings in signals intelligence and radio frequency areas.
QRC, which is based in Fredericksburg, Va., is owned by the private equity firm DC Capital Partners. The company has about 115 employees and expects to generate about $56 million in sales and $18 million in operating earnings in its fiscal year 2020. Parsons expects the deal to be accretive to its 2020 earnings excluding one-time transaction costs.
The acquisition will add U.S. Special Operations Command as a customer for Parsons. QRC also adds in-house product development as a new capability for Parsons, “which will provide significant value and unlock untapped potential for our customers across federal solutions and critical infrastructure,” a spokesman for Parsons told Defense Daily.
“Bringing QRC into the Parsons family complements our existing portfolio, increases our presence in the high-growth markets of spectrum awareness and surveillance, adds critical intellectual property that complements and expands our available capabilities for the Special Operations and intelligence communities,” Chuck Harrington, chairman and CEO of Parsons, said in a statement. “Our expansion into military hardware will provide value for both our shareholders and customers across federal solutions and critical infrastructure.”
QRC’s customers also include the Navy, Marine Corps and international. Larry Swift, the company’s CEO, said that joining with Parsons gives his company “scale, including increased investments, expanded pipelines, existing protocols, and additional business development resources which will result in additional speed and value to our current and future customers.”
In the past 14 months, Parsons has also acquired Polaris Alpha, which provided mission solutions capabilities in machine learning, data, video, multi-source analytics, and automated reasoning technologies for the Defense Department and intelligence community, and OGSystems, which gave it sensor solutions and software for defense and intelligence as well.
Parsons, which is based in Northern Virginia, is an engineering, construction, defense and security company. It significantly boosted its defense work in 2011 with the acquisition of Sparta.
Parsons put the net value of the deal for QRC at $185 million due to the net present value of a $30 million related tax benefit. Goldman Sachs is Parsons’ financial adviser on the acquisition. QRC didn’t use a financial adviser. It received legal advice from the law firm of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer.