Intrepidus, a firm of 19 staff (primarily testers) conducts hands-on assessments of critical applications, networks and products to uncover vulnerabilities – and then helps its clients to remediate those vulnerabilities. Its customers include blue chip US firms, with 95% of its revenue coming from the mobile telecommunications and financial services sectors. NCC Group is an international, independent provider of escrow and assurance services.
At the time of writing there is no specific news announcement on the Intrepidus website, although it has tweeted, “Big news for us today. We've joined with the great team at NCC Group. We're excited about the future.” NCC expects the company to continue largely as is, being managed autonomously within the Group's Assurance Division by the Intrepidus management team, and trading as ‘Intrepidus, an NCC Group company.’
The acquisition is being financed from NCC Group's existing debt facilities and internally generated cash flow. It comprises an initial payment of £3.7m ($5.8m) in cash and then two further cash payments of up to £3.4m ($5.2m) in total against performance related targets over the next 24 months.
The main reasons for the acquisition are to strengthen NCC’s US footprint, and to widen its profile in the growing mobile security market. “This acquisition is an important strategic development for us,” explained Rob Cotton, NCC Group’s chief executive, “as it considerably widens our range of offerings, as well as industry IP, and brings a number of new blue chip technology customers.” He noted the Intrepidus growth record, and added, “we are confident that it will continue to thrive with the additional resources of the wider Group.”
At 9:30 am (BST) this morning NCC’s share price had risen 3.00p to 884p, but has by 11:00am settled back to 882.5p.