Lingo Adds BullsEye Telecom to Ongoing Acquisition Spree

Lingo Management is buying BullsEye Telecom in a move executives say will create a $250 million North American network operator.

Southfield, Michigan-based BullsEye will joined Atlanta-based Lingo for an undisclosed sum. BullsEye brings enterprise and SMB customers as well as carrier customers to Lingo. The combined company will provide cloud communications and managed services. Its technologies include security, fiber, SD-WAN, managed Wi-Fi, POTS and POTS replacement.

“This acquisition marks another major milestone in Lingo’s journey as leading cloud communication and managed services provider to business and carrier customers of all sizes,” Lingo president and CEO Vincent Oddo said. Customers today demand end-to-end communications solutions that are efficient and innovative. Lingo is uniquely positioned to provide these services and can now do so with increased scale and resources.”

Lingo’s Vincent Oddo

BullsEye president and CEO Tom Tisko said his company’s board of directors made the decision after a “wide range of alternatives.”

BullsEye’s Tom Tisko

“This transaction with Lingo enables the combined companies to increase service levels with a broad array of products to a larger number of customers,” Tisko said.

Channel Impact

Lingo executives said they will welcome BullsEye customers and partners. The company leans on agent partners for a significant portion of its business. Lingo announced in March 2020 that it had signed its 135th partnership with an agent, having founded its channel in 2019.

“We also look forward to integrating the BullsEye sales organizations including management, representatives, sales partners, suppliers and support staff into the Lingo sales family,” said Christopher Ramsey, Lingo’s vice president of sales and marketing. “We are committed to making this a smooth and productive transition for all divisions.”

Lingo’s Christopher Ramsey

The transaction will close in approximately three to four months pending regulatory approvals. Both companies’ boards have approved the deal, which gives Lingo 100% of BullsEye stock.

Lingo underwent a recapitalization in late 2020 that gave B. Riley Financial additional equity in the business.

Background

Lingo in early 2019 Lingo completed the acquisition of TNCI Telecom, which now operates as a wholesale carrier and CPaaS subsidiary called Impact Telecom. Later in 2019 Lingo acquired approximately 4,000 customers Fusion Connect SMB customers in 30 states. Lingo in 2020 used an agent sales agreement to buy customers from Blue Casa Telephone. It also purchased Tempo Telecom, which now functions as its consumer lifeline wireless subsidiary, in 2020.

“Having successfully completed many acquisitions in the past, we are confident in our ability to execute a fast and seamless integration. We have already started on our integration planning and, as in prior transactions, we expect to begin implementation of those plans immediately after closing,” Lingo chief financial officer Bill Morris said.

Partner Perspective

Peter Radizeski, founder and president of Rad-Info, said Lingo appears to be starting another round of M&A. He said the age of CLEC resellers is at an end, leading many companies to try to make a pivot using M&A.

Rad-Info’s Peter Radizeski

“Buyers are looking for technology partners who can help their businesses transform and compete in the post-pandemic world. They want help with work from anywhere; hackers and ransomware; less talent; and customer experience. It takes an awful lot of strategy, execution and patience to turn any provider from a reseller CLEC into a cloud provider,” Radizeski said. “Many vendors can’t make that transition. Many investors don’t want to wait any more. We are at an inflection point in both telecom and IT as so many changes are happening at the same time – and not everyone can keep up – not all buyers, not all businesses, not all vendors and not all partners.”

Radizeski wrote about the BullsEye acquisition as well as Sangoma’s acquisition of NetFortris and HP’s acquisition of Poly.

According to Lingo, the company last year increased its cloud and unified communications sales booking by 100% year-over-year. Total sales bookings reportedly ticked up by 66%.

BullsEye last year bought broadband aggregator Bandwave Systems.