What will Brennan IT's Dave Stevens do next? Make deals

Dave Stevens is ready to focus on mergers and acquisitions after handing over day-to-day running of Brennan IT, the company he founded nearly 20 years ago.

Stevens announced last September that Brennan IT had secured a $30 million war chest for M&A, but so far deals have failed to materialise.

Now with Stephen Sims stepping up as CEO of Brennan IT, Stevens will head into 2016 with renewed energy for deal-making.

Stevens said 2015 had been a "blue-ribbon year" for Brennan IT, as it cracked $92 million revenue and is on track to break through $100 million in 2016, but he was less ebullient about his success in M&A.

"We gave ourselves an 'F' on the scorecard for that. Deals were done but we didn't do them. Oriel went into Big Air and Harbour went into Canon and there has been a long list as what we could call out as being competitors in various regions were acquired.

"We knew about these deals but we didn't get in; we didn't win. But some of these valuations were not what we considered appropriate. We need to make sure we acquire appropriately to build our enterprise," Stevens said.

"If you are acquiring for some sort of skill you don't have and you have tried to build it, as is the case with some of those acquisitions, you are motivated to pay more because you feel like you are getting more value. But in those spaces, we have a significantly larger business in each of those and it is not something we will pay a premium to acquire – it is something we already know how to do.

"We will pay an appropriate and fair market price but we won't pay a premium for intellectual property or a skill we don't possess. If you can't buy it, we will build it."

Brennan IT is no stranger to acquisitions but it has been a long time since a deal was completed – no transactions have been done since the purchases of S Central and Sirocco in 2010.

Stevens has specific acquisition targets in mind – what he called "bolt-on plays" in areas such as managed service or voice and data.

The handover to new chief executive Stephen Sims has also taken priority to M&A, Stevens added. "We will start afresh in the new year. We knocked on a lot of doors but we will circle back and knock on a few more."

Overnight, another landmark merger joined the flurry of deals in the Australian IT channel as Logicalis acquired Thomas Duryea.