Briefcase: July 2018
BRIEFS
New York-based Persistent Systems LLC will triple its space in Fort Collins in order to meet needs resulting from increased demand for its product, the Wave Relay mobile ad hoc networking technology and ancillary services. Wave Relay transmits and receives data, video, voice and other applications under the most difficult conditions. Persistent has increased its space through a lease extension, with build-out of the space to be completed in time for an opening ceremony on Oct. 1 at 5042 Technology Parkway.
CLOSING
Old Chicago Pizza & Taproom plans to close its Old Town Fort Collins location in November. The location at 147 S. College Ave. opened in 1982. Old Chicago’s other Fort Collins location, 4709 S. Timberline Road, has been in operation since 2000 and is expected to keep its doors open. The chief executive of Old Chicago’s parent company, CraftWorks Restaurants & Breweries Group Inc., recently stepped down. Over the past few years, multiple Old Chicago locations have also shuttered, including its original location on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, one on Denver’s Market Street and its downtown Colorado Springs branch.
Miramont closed its Wellington medical clinic, leaving that town with just one health-care provider. Miramont was Wellington’s only health-care service provider until February, when Banner Health Clinic opened. Miramont opened nearly 10 years ago, after the departure of Cheyenne Regional Medical Center left the town without a health-care provider.
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CONTRACTS
Black Swift Technologies LLC, a Boulder-based specialized aerospace engineering firm, was awarded a contract by NASA to develop an unmanned aircraft system designed to perform upper atmospheric observations of Venus. BST is proposing a planetary aerial vehicle that will use dynamic soaring, a method that will extract energy from the atmosphere, allowing the device to operate in Venus’ unique conditions.
UQM Technologies Inc. (NYSE: UQM), which manufactures motors for electric vehicles, entered the Taiwan bus market. The Longmont-based company received an order for its PowerPhase DT system from the Chung Shing Group, which will evaluate the system. UQM says the system, used for full-size buses, allows for greater speed and torque range than other systems, allowing smaller motors to power large vehicles.
Boulder-based Advanced Space LLC, which designs software and provides specialized services for the aerospace industry, signed a two-year contract with NASA to continue developing a peer-to-peer navigation system for the moon. The goal is for the system to scale with increased demand and to be used for government and commercial space missions.
Boulder-based Clovis Oncology Inc. (Nasdaq: CLVS) partnered with Immunomedics Inc. (Nasdaq: IMMU) to collaborate on a clinical trial investigating the combination of their two drugs. The study will combine Clovis’ Rubraca with Immunomedics’ lead antibody drug conjugate, sacituzumab govitecan, for treatment in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer and metastatic urothelial cancer.
DEADLINES
The Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce is accepting applications for the 2018-2019 Leadership Fort Collins class through 5 p.m. Aug. 13. The chamber established Leadership Fort Collins in 1981 to inform participants about the history, government, economy, social issues, needs and opportunity in the community. Thirty current and emerging leaders from throughout the area will be selected to participate in the program, which will begin in September and conclude in May 2019. Applications can be emailed to ahutchison@fcchamber.org or mailed or taken to the Chamber office at 225 S. Meldrum St., Fort Collins 80521.
EARNINGS
Broomfield-based Vail Resorts, Inc. (NYSE: MTN) showed fiscal third-quarter net income up 41.5 percent over the same period in 2017. Vail Resorts’ third quarter ended April 30. Net income for the third quarter was $256.3 million, compared with $181.1 million for the third quarter one year before. Vail also reported that season pass sales for the 2018-19 ski season increased about 12 percent in units and 19 percent in sales dollars through May, compared with the same period in 2017. Vail’s board has declared a quarterly dividend on common stock of $1.47 per share, payable on July 12 to shareholders of record on June 27. Additionally, the company repurchased $25.8 million of stock during the quarter at an average price of $223.51.
KUDOS
Madwire, a digital marketing firm based in Fort Collins, won the Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award that recognizes the top chief executive officers in 2018. It’s the fourth year that Madwire has won the award. Chief executives JB and Joe Kellogg, founders of the company, received a 98 percent approval rating in the small and medium-sized business category. Glassdoor is a job and recruiting website that works with employers from around the country.
Leadership Northern Colorado, a collaborative leadership training program conducted by the chambers of commerce in Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley and the community foundations based in Larimer and Weld counties, graduated its ninth class on June 26 at a breakfast event at Windsong Event Center. Members of this year’s class are: Laura Armstrong, Heart J Center at Sylvan Dale; Seth Baucke, Bank of Colorado; Avery Buser, The Group Inc. Real Estate; Erika Benti, Colorado State University; Erik Berlin, Bryan Construction; Marisa Donegon, city of Fort Collins; Ryan Dusil, North Front Range MPO; Bianca Fisher, Greeley Downtown Development Authority; Erin Frisch, Academy Mortgage Corp.; James Herman, Radiology Imaging Associates; Beth Higgins, Poudre School District; Rebecca Holder-Otte, Banner Health; Bryce Jacobson, Greeley Tribune; John Kloster-Prew, Audubon Rockies; Jennifer McLain, Alpha Center; Tyler Nichols, Eide Bailly CPAs; Clay Olson, Transamerica Financial Advisors; Emily Peddicord, Saunders Heath Construction; Lee Reiff, Larimer County; Sarah Rice, Kaiser Permanente; Sylvia Robinson, TOLMAR, Inc.; Daniel Roth, Yogasacrificium; Brian Rowe, town of Windsor; Joyce Saffel, Columbine Health Systems; Jared Shamburger, US Bank; Shelby Sommer, The Brendle Group; Nicholas Spezza, Front Range Community College; Derek Strader, Banner Health; Tara Streeb, Teaching Tree; Stacey Swanson, Larimer County; Grace Taylor, UCHealth; and Clint Torczon, State Farm Insurance.
Best for Colorado, a statewide program inviting Colorado companies to strive to be the best for Colorado’s workers, communities and the environment, announced its 2018 honorees, along with the Best for the World B Corporations. Best for Colorado and Best for the World are organized by B Lab, a nonprofit organization that serves a global movement of people using business as a force for good. Organizations in Northern Colorado and the Boulder Valley that were honored as Best for Colorado were Fort Collins-based AYZH Inc., Horse & Dragon Brewing Co. and Solas Energy LLC; and Boulder-based Fortuna Single Estate Chocolate LLC, Relish Studio, Upslope Brewing Co., Avid4 Adventure Inc., Organic Sandwich Co., My Trail Co. and Modus Law Ltd. Boulder-based Only Natural Pet LLC was one of three honorable-mention honorees in the category. Among the Best For the World winners were Boulder-based Bloomin, Blue Dot Advocates PBC, Boulder Industries, C and L LLC dba Conscious Coffees, Conscience Bay Co. LLC, Conscious Company Magazine, CSMlearn PBC, dojo4 LLC, The Foundry Group LLC, Impact Hub Boulder, Jason Wiener PC, Namaste Solar, Organic India USA LLC and Unreasonable Group LLC; and Broomfield-based Altivia Solutions LLC and aWhere Inc.
The Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce announced winners of its 2018 Small Business of the Year Awards. RJ’s Amazing Entertainment LLC won in the “small” category, while Colorado Iron & Metal Inc. took the “medium” category and Neuworks Mechanical took the “large” category. Honored as “new kid on the block” was Elevate Chiropractic. Other finalists were BG Automotive, Craig Vollmer Photography, Jennifer Richardson Insurance Agency Inc., Coan Payton & Payne LLC, Independent Plumbing Solutions Inc., Keller Williams Realty Northern Colorado, Crafted Leadership LLC and Music City Hot Chicken.
Boulder-based Frasier, the only Accredited Continuing Care Retirement Community in Colorado, received its third straight five-year accreditation from the Commission on the Accreditation of Rehabilitation Systems.
MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS
Denver-based CoBiz Financial Inc. (Nasdaq: COBZ), with bank locations throughout the metro Denver area, Boulder, Louisville and Fort Collins, will merge with Tulsa, Okla.-based BOK Financial Corp. (Nasdaq: BOKF). Colorado State Bank and Trust is a division of BOK Financial. The institutions signed a definitive merger agreement. The transaction is valued at about $1 billion. About 75 percent of the consideration will be in stock, with the rest in cash.
EKS&H, a Denver-based accounting firm with major offices in Boulder and Fort Collins, is merging with Detroit-based Plante Moran. Together, the two companies will form the 11th largest audit, tax, wealth-advisory and consulting firm in the United States. The merger will be effective Oct. 1. Client service teams will remain the same, and customer fees will also not be increased because of the transaction. EKS&H has 38 employees at 1155 Canyon Blvd. in Boulder and 39 employees at 1321 Oakridge Drive in Fort Collins.
Canarchy Craft Brewery Collective, the Longmont-based owner of Oskar Blues Brewery, acquired Dallas-based Deep Ellum Brewing Co. for an undisclosed sum. The sale is expected to provide Deep Ellum with resources for increased production and distribution.
Splunk Inc. (Nasdaq: SPLK), a San Francisco-based big-data platform company, agreed to acquire VictorOps Inc., a Boulder-based tech company that specializes in full-stack operations for DevOps teams. The deal, valued at approximately $120 million in cash and Splunk securities, is expected to close during Splunk’s fiscal second quarter. Almost all of the VictorOps purchase price will be paid in cash, funded from Splunk’s balance sheet.
Grey Mountain Partners, a Boulder-based private-equity firm, sold Sunbelt Transformer, which provides electrical power solutions for commercial, industrial and utility customers. Sunbelt, based in Sharon, Pa., and Temple, Texas, was acquired by New York-based Trilantic North America. Grey Mountain partnered with Sunbelt in December 2014 with the goals of expanding the product and service offering, and leveraging Sunbelt’s value proposition to serve new customers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Minute Key Holdings Inc., the Boulder-based maker of self-service key-duplicating kiosks, soon will have a new owner. The Hillman Group Inc., a Cincinnati-based company that provides hardware solutions to retailers, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Minute Key. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Fort Collins-based Woodward Inc. (Nasdaq: WWD) closed on its acquisition of L’Orange GmbH and its related operations for about $811 million from Rolls Royce. L’Orange makes fuel injection systems and has assets in Germany, China and the United States.
Pioneer Landscape Centers, based in Highlands Ranch, purchased Midwest Materials, a Longmont company. The acquisition is the second this year for Pioneer, which bought Grand Materials & Supply in Arizona earlier this year. Midwest Materials will become a Pioneer division upon finalizing the acquisition and will maintain current leadership and employees.
LogRhythm Inc., a Boulder security-information and event-management solutions company, has a new majority owner. Thoma Bravo, a private-equity firm with offices in San Francisco and Chicago, made a majority investment in the company. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of this year.
MOVES
Teltoo, a telecommunications startup that recently went through the Upramp accelerator, relocated to Boulder and is hiring a chief operations officer and employees. Teltoo is a decentralized, software-only video delivery technology that helps network operators and content owners handle traffic spikes and optimize delivery costs for live video streaming. At the end of last year, Teltoo officially relocated to Boulder from Madrid, Spain, after its experience going through CableLabs’ Upramp Fiterator.
The Food Bank for Larimer County moved into a new headquarters building that will serve as the agency’s warehouse, kitchen and administrative offices. The new facility is at 5760 Wright Drive in Loveland, near Northern Colorado Regional Airport. The building previously housed High Country Beverage.
Tact L3C, a maker of software applications for the Salesforce platform, rebranded as Mogli, a name derived from the Mobile GLobal Impact the company makes. The company also moved from 3055 47th St., Unit A, in Boulder to 104 Second Ave. in the Niwot historic district.
Symmetry Builders Inc. moved its headquarters from Boulder to Dacono, setting up shop in a development it helped build. Symmetry, a privately held commercial general contractor, leased 7,000 square feet of a 38,000-square-foot, flex-industrial building developed by Centennial-based Resolute Investments Inc. Symmetry built the core and shell, and handled the tenant finishes for the space it occupies that includes a 2,000-square-foot shop. The building, at 5069 Silver Peak Ave., is the second phase of Longs Peak Business Center. The center consists of two buildings, the first completed about 10 years ago by Denver-based dcb Construction Co. for Resolute Investments. The two buildings combined total about 80,300 square feet.
RockyMounts, a maker of bike racks, mounts and locks for vehicles, plans to move its headquarters from Boulder about 250 miles west to Grand Junction. RockyMounts, founded by Bobby Noyes in Boulder in the mid-1990s, will move to a business park being developed specifically for outdoor industry companies.
NAME CHANGES
Public Service Credit Union changed its name to Canvas Credit Union. With the rebranding, Colorado State University’s one-year-old stadium has a new name. The Englewood-based credit union in April had bought the naming rights to CSU’s new on-campus football stadium in Fort Collins for $37.7 million, which now is called Canvas Stadium. The credit union operates 28 branches across the state, including four in Fort Collins and others in Loveland, Greeley, Windsor, Broomfield and Brighton. It has about 232,000 members and 529 employees.
OPENING
First National Bank, a subsidiary of First National of Nebraska, opened a customer-service center in Greeley, initially employing 44 people. The center is located on the second floor of the bank’s retail branch location at 1701 23rd Ave. in the Cottonwood retail center. First National Bank has operated in Greeley since 1994, when it acquired Union Colony Bank. The bank operates 24 retail branch locations along the Front Range, including multiple locations in Boulder, Fort Collins, Greeley, Longmont and Loveland.
Falls Church, Va.-based Apollo Enterprise Imaging Corp. set up a satellite office in The Oakridge Business Park in Fort Collins. Apollo, a company that provides image-management and workflow software to the health-care industry, subleased 5,000 square feet of office space at 4700 Innovation Drive from ProEnergy Services LLC.
Hale & Bradford Distillery in Berthoud opened a tasting room combined with a retail fly-fishing store, and soon, the distillery’s co-owner Jim Dawe will open a restaurant in the historic Oddfellows building in downtown Berthoud. Hale & Bradford Tasting Room & Backcut Fly Shop is at 441 Mountain Ave. It will serve as the tasting room for the distillery.
Front Range Orthopedics & Spine, a provider of orthopedic services and sports medicine, opened the Orthopedic Walk-in Clinic, located at its main building at 1610 Dry Creek Drive in south Longmont.
An affiliate of Learning Care Group Inc. based in Novi, Mich., will open an Everbrook Academy child-care facility in Harmony Commons in southeast Fort Collins.
Waypoint Bank, the latest entrant into the Fort Collins banking market, opened a branch in 3,050 square feet of space at 2900 S. College Ave. The Cozad, Neb.-based bank in October changed its name from First Bank & Trust Co., which was using the name Mountain View Bank in Colorado. The bank in 2016 opened a loan-production office in Loveland but closed it in December, with those services shifted to the branch in Fort Collins.
Mighty Rivers Brewing Co. will open Windsor’s third brewery around Aug. 1 at the corner of North Fairgrounds Avenue and Colonial Park Drive.
Ziggi’s Coffee, a Longmont-based chain of coffee houses, is expanding to Greeley, its 10th location in the state. Ziggi’s will open in July at 5815 20th St., near Aims Community College. Ziggi’s has been in an expansion mode. The company opened a location in Erie in May and in October signed a franchise agreement to enter the Arizona market.
PRODUCT UPDATE
Boulder-based Ball Aerospace & Technology demonstrated the Methane Monitor, technology that can detect methane emissions remotely using piloted aircraft. The technology has applications in the oil and gas industry. Working with Stanford University and the Environmental Defense Fund Mobile Monitoring Challenge, Ball produced a high-resolution, geo-referenced image of simulated methane leaks in near real-time.
SERVICES
BizWest Media LLC updated the online version of Boulder Valley MD, a directory of medical facilities and providers practicing in the Boulder Valley. The 2018 directory, initially published in February, includes more than 1,200 facilities in Boulder and Broomfield counties, along with more than 1,400 providers. A digital edition of Boulder Valley MD and an Excel spreadsheet of the directory are available online.
Zayo Group Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: ZAYO) completed a new fiber route in Western Europe. The coherent wavelength route spans from Marseille to Strasbourg, in France, via Milan. The route also provides connectivity to Paris, Frankfurt, London and Amsterdam. It leverages the fiber network it acquired from Viatel. The route is part of Zayo’s efforts to expand its dark fiber and longhaul wavelength network throughout Europe.
BRIEFS
New York-based Persistent Systems LLC will triple its space in Fort Collins in order to meet needs resulting from increased demand for its product, the Wave Relay mobile ad hoc networking technology and ancillary services. Wave Relay transmits and receives data, video, voice and other applications under the most difficult conditions. Persistent has increased its space through a lease extension, with build-out of the space to be completed in time for an opening ceremony on Oct. 1 at 5042 Technology Parkway.
CLOSING
Old Chicago Pizza & Taproom plans to close its Old Town Fort Collins location…