CARLSBAD – Just months after filing for bankruptcy protection, the telematics company CalAmp has moved its headquarters from Irvine to Carlsbad, been restructured from a public to a private firm and is preparing to launch a new feature.
“The company is going pretty strong, even though it’s bouncing back from Chapter 11,” said Chris Adams, who joined the telematics company as CEO in January.
CEO
CalAmp
At the time, the company was heavily in debt, and Adams saw few options.
“They borrowed $230 million to go on a buying spree,” he said. “And it was a really low interest rate, it was 2% interest. So you imagine if you’re a CEO sitting on 2% interest, you’re like, ‘This is great.’ But eventually it was going to come due, and it was going to come due August next year.”
Adams said some of the fundamental issues were customers placing orders for more than they needed post-COVID, so revenue dropped.
“We had less cash than $230 million by a wide margin,” Adams said. “I knew I had to solve the debt problem. I didn’t know for sure how I was going to solve it. There was only a short list of options.”
Public to Private
Enter the private equity firm Lynrock Lake, which had bought CalAmp’s debt and in July completed an 8-week process of taking over the company.
The company closed its Oxnard office and moved its headquarters from Irvine to Carlsbad, where CalAmp has had an office since 2009. Adams said the company has had a presence in San Diego since at least 2005, when it had offices in Del Mar and La Jolla.
CalAmp has a variety of telematics products for vehicles, and the best-known is the LoJack stolen vehicle recovery system, which it bought in 2016 for $134 million. CalAmp still owns LoJack in Italy, the UK, Spain and Mexico, but not the United States.
Founded in Newbury Park in 1981, CalAmp acquired several companies throughout the 2000s and by 2020 had $366 million in annual revenue and 1,000 employees.
While the company has downsized since then, it still makes several popular products, including a dash cam, anti-theft devices and tracking systems.
“I would say we’re most known for selling the telematics hardware that enables other companies to offer telematics services,” Adams said, noting that Bobcat and Toro are among the company’s customers.
But there also are products that people may use without knowing the technology is from CalAmp, such as the popular app Here Comes the Bus.
“One of the things we do is we put these trackers on school buses,” Adams said. “The solution has readers to detect each student coming on or off the bus, and we report that back to the school district.”
Parents with the app on their phone are assured their child made it on and off the bus through the technology, he said.
“You could give a kid a cell phone, but who knows if someone steals the cell phone,” Adams said. “So we’re actually tracking the kid, not a cell phone.”
The technology is on about 20% of school buses in the U.S., he said.
Delivery drivers also may recognize another CalAmp product in the dash camera that records their performance.
Other drivers may remember seeing a trailer that has a rectangular box with solar panels on top. Inside the box is a CalAmp tracking device, which is kept charged by the solar panels even when the trailer is parked for long periods, Adams said.
The Faraday Cage
One of the more unusual areas of the company’s large Carlsbad headquarters is the Faraday Cage, named after the street outside their building.
“In Europe, we have a problem with thieves stealing new cars to ship to Russia,” Adams said, explaining that the thefts are a way around export restrictions to the country. “A huge problem is thieves using these jammers.”
A jammer will prevent a tracking system from working, so the company has developed a product for jamming detect.
Testing the product, however, is problematic because the jamming frequencies would bleed out of the building and affect other nearby GPS devices. The solution was to build a room, the Faraday Cage, that has a metal roof with tiny holes, much like a microwave oven door that has a screen to prevent microwaves from escaping.
CalAmp also is developing new products as it rebounds, and this month announced an Inventory Manager feature for its customers.
The feature provides comprehensive oversight of all orders and includes a centralized inventory system, streamlined order management and automated device registration.
CalAmp
FOUNDED: 1981
CEO: Chris Adams
HEADQUARTERS: Carlsbad
BUSINESS: Telematics
EMPLOYEES: 550
ANNUAL REVENUE: $200 million
WEBSITE: https://www.calamp.com
NOTABLE: CalAmp’s Here Comes the Bus technology is on about 20% of school buses in the U.S
