The parent company of Santa Ana’s Hirsch Electronics LLC is continuing its roll-up strategy with the recent acquisition of Switzerland’s BlueHill ID AG.
Hirsch is a maker of smart card-based security systems for computer networks and buildings.
Earlier this year, privately held Hirsch was bought by Germany’s SCM Microsystems Inc., a maker of smart card readers.
SCM bought BlueHill in an all-stock deal. Both BlueHill and Hirsch will continue to operate independently as subsidiaries under SCM, the company said.
Hirsch kept its executives, brand name and sales group.
SCM has seen a lot of growth after picking up Hirsch in April.
Sales were up 70% year-over-year in the second quarter, the first which counted results from Hirsch, according to Rob Zivney, vice president of marketing at Hirsch.
SCM Microsystems is publicly traded on the Nasdaq and had a recent market value of about $65 million.
The company has been making acquisitions in order to nab federal stimulus funds that are allotted for improving security, Zivney said.
The big buzzword in cybersecurity is “convergence”—the joining together of both physical security (buildings) and logical security (network access).
“The customer wants both,” Zivney said.
Hirsch counts the federal government, hospitals, retailers and schools as customers.
Others include the J. Paul Getty Museum, Port of Long Beach, city of Brea and several airports in Southern California. The company’s technology also secures a handful of department stores, including Macy’s and Nordstrom.
SCM has made Hirsch’s offices here its U.S. hub.
“Orange County happens to be one of the centers of the universe for security systems,” Zivney said.
The company closed a small office it had in the Bay Area earlier this year and moved its functions to Santa Ana. Its global headquarters are in Munich. The company’s board, on which Hirsch Chief Executive Larry Midland has a seat, rotates where it meets.
Hirsch, which had been around for more than 25 years, makes smart cards, sensors and card readers here. It has some 22,000 square feet of space in Santa Ana with about 100 workers.
Local Growth
It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Irvine’s Local.com Corp., which runs an online search engine for finding local businesses and products.
A local search is generally defined as one for a product, service or business coupled with a location—such as “flowers in Irvine.”
The site allows users to search for businesses in their areas and advertisers to target them.
Local.com saw its shares go on a wild ride a few weeks ago after a false report that the company was being bought by Microsoft Corp. for around $200 million.
The company shot down the rumor and said the announcement was a fake.
Shares shot skyward on the news but later lost most of the run-up.
Still, the stock is up nearly 200% since the start of the year on a recent market value of around $78 million.
The company recently gave a peek at its third-quarter results, which are set to come in ahead of Wall Street’s expectations when they are reported on Oct. 29.
For the three months through September, the company said it expects revenue of $14.8 million to $15.1 million, surpassing the high end of its previous outlook of $14.6 million in sales.
It expects adjusted profits of $1.3 million to $1.4 million.
Analysts, on average, are looking for the company to post a loss of $287,000 on sales of $14.4 million.
Last month, it was ranked the 10th largest search engine in the U.S. by market researcher Nielsen Co.
Nielsen looks at several search metrics, including total searches, unique searchers and search share.
Among other milestones, the company also marked its 10th anniversary this month.
Chairman and Chief Executive Heath Clarke rang the Nasdaq opening bell a few weeks ago at a ceremony in New York’s Times Square.
Tech Evolution Awards
A slew of OC-based technology companies were named winners at the first-ever Tech Evolution Awards, a ceremony held at the Island Hotel in Newport Beach earlier this month.
The awards, put on by a group of companies that sponsored the event, set out to recognize local companies that have “transformative” technologies.
Among the winners: Fountain Valley’s Kingston Technology Co., the world’s top maker of memory products for computers and consumers; Santa Ana’s STEC Inc., a maker of flash memory drives for corporate and industrial uses; Irvine’s WebVisible Inc., a startup maker of software that helps automate the process of buying online advertising; and Santa Ana’s Western Digital Corp., a maker of hard drives for computers and consumer electronics.
“Whether they are changing lives or enhancing productivity, these unique advances are taking the technology industry to new heights,” said Mark Skaist, shareholder at Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth. The Newport Beach-based law firm was a sponsor of the event.
