Tysons residential and commercial security company Alarm.com Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: ALRM) expects to continue building its Northern Virginia headcount to the point it will outgrow its nearly 190,000-square-foot facility.
That’s after it announced earlier this year the addition of another 180 jobs at its headquarters as part of a $2.6 million investment to grow its research and development operation there.
“We have been regularly hiring and expanding for many years and so we’re kind of constantly in discussions around how we’re going to house all the staff,” Jeff Bedell, chief strategy and innovation officer at Alarm.com, said in an interview. The company previously amended its lease — which it signed in 2014 — to take on more space. It houses sales and marketing, research and development, customer service and administrative staff at its headquarters, according to an annual report it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in February.
Because the company already has 700 employees at its headquarters and occupies a large amount of the building at 8281 Greensboro Drive, space to grow is limited. “We are actively figuring out how we house all the new recruits, and that will require expansion,” Bedell said. Work from home has altered that calculation, as the company has allowed its employees to conduct business outside the office since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
Long term, however, it will still need to find a way to house more employees, said Bedell. Will it look to remain in Northern Virginia? “I think, practically, our first preference is to stay in the area just because we have so many staff here,” Bedell said. “But I also think we’re going to have to figure out what we do when we get to a point where we’ve just outgrown our current facility.”
The company was first formed as part of MicroStrategy Inc. (NADAQ: MSTR) in 2000. It was then sold in 2009 and became an independent company in 2015. It’s mostly focused on residential security, but Bedell said it’s already begun to expand into the commercial sphere, providing security services for small and medium-sized businesses and investing in its video products.
In December 2020, it acquired Shooter Detection Systems, a gunshot detection company whose products contact law enforcement upon identifying a gunshot in an office or school campus setting. Alarm.com didn’t disclose how accurate Shooter Detection Systems’ products are, but Bedell said over email that it offers “the most accurate system available” on the market because it detects both sound and infrared light to identify gunshots. The Rowley, Massachusetts, company operates as a subsidiary of Alarm.com.
Alarm.com saw $749 million in total revenue in 2021, up from $618 million the year before. Its net income was $51.2 million for all of 2021, down from $76.7 million in 2020.
As of last month, Alarm.com was facing multiple patent-infringement lawsuits, including a lawsuit filed Jan. 10 by Redwood City, California’s EcoFactor Inc. alleging Alarm.com’s products and services infringe on five of EcoFactor’s patents, according to an SEC filing. In 2018, Alarm.com paid $28 million to settle a class-action lawsuit regarding its telemarketing practices.
