FORT COLLINS – Applied Computer Technology Inc. plans to build a new corporate headquarters within the next year and is considering asecondary stock offering. Those facts came to light at ACT’s first annual meeting of shareholders at the Hyatt Regency Tech Center in Denver July 11. While details on both initiatives are sketchy, ACT president and CEO Bud Prentice said the company plans to break ground within the next 12 monthson a new facility encompassing at least 30,000 square feet. He said the company, a systems integrator and manufacturer of computers, intends to remain in Fort Collins, where it currently leases about 20,000square feet. As for the secondary offering, both Prentice and ACT chief financial officer Robert Oliphant were tight-lipped about plans for an additional stock
offering. ACT went public last October, issuing 1 million shares of common stock and raising $3.3 million. The company’s stock closed July 29 at
$4.25 a share. Prentice told a group of shareholders, stock analysts and other guests at the annual meeting that money from the initial public offering was critical to
the company’s success and that ACT is now talking to underwriters about a potential secondary offering. He declined to discuss either the time table
or amount of such an offering. “There’s some real strict SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] rules about that,” Oliphant said. ACT has been experiencing phenomenal growth. Revenues shot up 62.4 percent last year, to $19 million from $11.7 million in 1994. Net income
totaled $535,020 in 1995 vs. a net loss of $132,441 a year ago. The company has made the Inc. 500 list three years straight and has benefited from
several large government contracts, including some to provide computers to faculty and students at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the
U.S. Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. ACT now employs about 80 workers and is hiring quickly. “This is the type of growth that we’ve been used to,” Prentice said. ACT recently formed two new subsidiaries. ACTNET offers direct connections to the Internet, as well as other Internet services such as Web-page
design, e-mail and Internet training. Applied Computer Technology Corp., a new subsidiary based in Hong Kong, will coordinate the company’s efforts in Asia. ACT is also in the midst of converting showrooms along the Front Range into business offices. The distinction is that showrooms were more
retail-oriented, while the business offices will cater more to technologically advanced customers. The business offices will include onsite technicians,
outbound technicians, onsite network technicians, etc. Showrooms in Fort Collins, Colorado Springs and Boulder have already been converted, while Denver is next, to be followed by the Denver
Technological Center location in September. All the company’s showrooms will be converted by year’s end. Prentice also said ACT hopes to capitalize on some slippage by one of its main competitors, the former Random Access. “We’re ramping as quickly as possible, obviously, to take advantage of that,” he said.