Seven months after BNDES investment of R$ 56 million, BRQ, specialized in information technology services, made something still rare for a Brazilian company in the sector: the acquisition of a business abroad. The company has just acquired the American ThinkInternational, New York, which already had commercial partnerships.
With the agreement, whose value is not unveiled, BRQ takes over 80% of ThinkInternational, which is now ThinkBRQ. The other 20% keep on the hands of the original owners, who have been in the Day by Day of the company for 11 years.
With the purchase, BRQ will absorb 50 employees of ThinkInternational and revenues of US$ 8 million projected for this year. In 2007, the income of the American company was US$ 6 million. This business leverages directly to international sales push in BRQ’s income. Last year, exports summed up US$ 15 million. In 2008 , the projection is to reach R$ 26 million, including revenues of ThinkInternational.
When the company received investments from BNDES, October last year, BRQ had already started negotiations abroad, but to get to this point of agreement demanded persistence and one year of negotiations. “It’s not easy to purchase an American company”, says Benjamim Quadros, president of the company. “There is too much resistance in selling a company to foreigners”.
The international flight is not the only piece of news of BRQ. The company also acquired the finance market customers portfolio of Prodacon, São Paulo.
“The company has customers from other sectors, who were out of the areas of interest”, says Quadros. The value is not unveiled either, but the expectation is to increase R$ 9 million in sales this year.
With the acquisition of ThinkInternational and the transference to part of Prodacon’s customers, besides original growth of its businesses, BRQ’s goal is to end the year with R$ 300 million, the double compared to last year.
The projection is organic growth of R$ 200 million in sales, with existing operations, and R$ 100 million generated by acquired businesses. Last year, the income was R$ 150 million, Quadros informs.
News acquisitions are in the radar of the company, including the possibility of closing a deal in Europe this year. Purchases are supported on resources obtained with BNDES – investments of R$ 50 million and a line of credit of R$ 6 million.
Since the beginning, the acquisitions were one of the two major destinations for the investment, says Quadros. The other was investment in infrastructure, which is also running. BRQ started implementing corporate management software and then put in practice other initiatives, including human resource projects, consolidation of datacenters and purchase of servers, computers that distribute resources in one network.
All the projects so far have been financed with company resources, but Quadros forecasts new investment of resources early next year, in order to carry on with BRQ’s growth plans.
The support to operations occurs in a scenario of fast changes in the information technology market in Brazil. The software sector has been through a strong phase of consolidation – with bigger companies purchasing smaller ones and companies of the same size merging.
In the services segment, the battle concerning services to customers abroad made it necessary to hire people with fluency in English allied to technical resources. BRQ knows exactly what it is. The company, with 1,9 thousand employees, has 11 open job vacancies in New York, which cannot be fulfilled.