ADT Inc.

In 1863, Edward A. Calahan invented a stock ticker[4][5][6] and formed the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company in 1867 to exploit the technology. Gold and Stock also developed a messenger system that sent instructions to and from the stock exchange floor. Three years later, the president of Gold and Stock Telegraph Company woke up to a burglar in his home, which inspired him to create a telegraph-based alert system. This system eventually connected 50 of his neighbors to a central station where all the alert boxes were monitored.[7] There were many small telegraph delivery companies in the United States in the 19th century.

In 1874, 57 district telegraph delivery companies affiliated and became "American District Telegraph". With the increase in telephone usage in the late 19th century, ADT's messenger business slowly declined in popularity. ADT tried branching out and developing their signaling business, while still maintaining their telegraph business as primary income source.

ADT incorporated into Western Union in 1901 and separated its messenger business from its main signaling business at that time. In 1909, Western Union and ADT came under the control of American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T). ADT began to expand into new areas, such as fire alarms and security alarms between 1910 and 1930, but was kept separate from AT&T's Holmes alarm business. ADT became a publicly traded company in the 1960s.[8]

In 1964, ADT was found to be a monopoly in restraint of trade. It was shown to provide almost 80% of the central station alarm service in the United States. In some cities, such as New York City and Memphis, Tennessee, they were the sole provider. They were also found to have forced competitors out of business by lowering prices below cost. They would charge national accounts very low prices in cities with competitors and much higher prices where no competition was available. ADT was forced to adopt a national price list, which could not be varied, to help establish central station competitors in cities without competition, and to pay fines and triple damages to the federal government, customers, and local competitors.[9]

In early 1987, the firm Hawley Goodall, owned by Lord Ashcroft, bought the Indianapolis-based Crime Control Inc., the fourth-largest company in the U.S. security market, for $50 million. Later in the year, it bought ADT and moved to Bermuda. This purchase transformed Hawley into the leading security services business in the United States, and resulted in the majority of its revenues coming from the North American market. As a result of the acquisition, Hawley changed its name to ADT Limited and decided to refocus its business around security services. At the end of 1987, the company sold its North American–based facility services business to Denmark's ISS A/S. Notorious serial killer Dennis Rader worked for this company from 1974 to 1988.

In 1997, ADT was purchased by Tyco, by means of a reverse takeover.[10]

In January 2010, Tyco announced that it was acquiring Broadview Security (formerly called Brink's Home Security) and was merging the company with its ADT division in a transaction valued at $2.0 billion.[11] In 2008 Brink's had spun out its home security business, which accounted for 15% of Brink's revenue that year, into a separate publicly traded company. The company rebranded as Broadview in 2009 with a massive advertising campaign.[12] The ads were widely criticized as unscrupulous, fear-mongering, and exaggerating what home security systems were capable of doing.[13][14][15] Unflattering parodies of Broadview's TV commercials, mocking the company's attempts to manipulate consumers were posted online, along with a filmed Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Andy Samberg and Bill Hader.[16][17][18][19] The acquisition of Broadview closed in mid-2010, and combined the #1 and #2 security companies in North America, adding Broadview's 1.3 million customer accounts and $565 million in annual recurring revenue to ADT's existing customer base of 7.4 million accounts and $3 billion in annual revenue.[20]

ADT Service vehicle

In September 2011, Tyco announced that it would split into three companies, ADT being one of the three.[21] On October 1, 2012, ADT debuted as an independent public company and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: ADT). In 2014, it acquired the Canadian company Reliance Protectron Security Services from Reliance Home Comfort.[22]

In February 2016, Apollo Global Management acquired ADT for nearly $7 billion and merged it with another home security firm, Protection 1.[23] The purchase price represented a premium of approximately 56 percent over ADT's closing share price on February 12, 2016 and, when combined with Protection 1, represented an aggregate transaction value of approximately $15 billion. In October 2019 Telus Corporation purchased all of ADT's Canadian assets for $700 million.[24] By September 2020, Telus had renamed ADT's Canadian assets to Telus SmartHome Security.[25]

As of March 2019, ADT has 9 monitoring centers and a network of more than 17,000 professionals, serving 6 millions customers in over 200 locations throughout the United States.[26][27]

• Official website