Alarm.com (Nasdaq: ALRM), a fast-growing home and business security company, announced Monday it will spend $2.6 million to grow its research and development footprint and hire 180 additional employees at its Tysons headquarters.
Those hires will join 700 workers now employed in the company's Northern Virginia office, according to the announcement. Alarm.com (NASDAQ: ALRM) currently spans roughly 190,000 square feet at its headquarters site, at 8281 Greensboro Drive, as part of a leasing deal first signed in 2014 and set to expire in 2026.
Officials for the company, which also leases offices in Minnesota, California, New York, Washington state and other locations, said Monday they chose to expand its R&D operations in Virginia because of the county's school systems, as well as the nearby talent pool, among other considerations. Across 2021, it said it grew its total R&D headcount from 780 to 837 people as of the end of last year, according to its most recent annual report filed Feb. 24 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Under an agreement with the state, Alarm.com is eligible to receive $700 per new job created, or up to $126,000 in all, from the Virginia Jobs Investment Program, a state program that reimburses companies in some degree for adding or retraining full-time employees, so long as they remain on the payroll for at least 90 days. Fairfax County did not offer incentives as part of this announcement, according to county officials.
It's a small boost for a company that saw its annual revenue grow for the past two years — as much as 17% last year alone — to $460.4 million in 2021, though its profits were slashed by one-third year-over-year to $51.18 million last year. Led by CEO Stephen Trundle, the company pointed to the costs of a growing head count, from 1,404 to 1,500 in all in 2021, as well as rising shipping and component costs as it faces supply chain challenges with its hardware sales, which has otherwise been a growing part of Alarm.com's revenue base.
Monday's announcement, with significant fanfare from Gov. Glenn Youngkin's office, is but a small step toward his stated longer-term goal to add 400,000 jobs and 10,000 startups across his tenure, per state officials.
Its tone was perhaps more upbeat than that of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors last week, upon the latter's receipt of the county executive’s proposed fiscal year 2023 municipal budget.
Several supervisors worried publicly what persistent office vacancies and falling tax assessments of big office buildings might spell for the future of the county’s economy and tax base. While the new budget year will see residential assessment grow by nearly 10%, with the average tax bill going up by $666, assessments for big offices and vacant nonresidential land will shrink by about 0.5% and 0.7%, respectively.
The building Alarm.com occupies in Tysons, for example, has fallen in assessed value every year for four years — down from $71.7 million in 2019 to $62.6 million in 2022 — according to the county’s parcel database.
The downward office trend, while exacerbated by the pandemic, has been underway for years, according to Fairfax County Economic Development Authority CEO Victor Hoskins.
“In time, it’ll all shake out," he said during Monday's event. "But the bottom line is that continued job growth is good for an economy.”
The connection between jobs and economic growth and stability is perhaps more nuanced, though. As Supervisor Penny Gross, D-Mason, noted last week, unlike the state and feds, Virginia municipalities derive most of their revenue from property taxes, but none from income directly.
