TPx's Jim Delis: Going Public Will Fuel Growth for Partners

TPx’s Jim Delis: Going Public Will Fuel Growth for Partners

Written by Edward Gately
February 14, 2019

We learn what the big change will mean for partners and the reaction thus far from the channel community.

TPx, the managed services and connectivity provider, took the channel by surprise this month when it announced it is combining with Pensare Acquisition Corp. in a $343 million transaction to become a Nasdaq-listed public company.

Pensare already is traded on the Nasdaq, and when the transaction closes, it will be renamed TPx Corp., trading under the ticker symbol TPXC. Pensare will pay $248 million in cash and $95 million in equity to TPx equity holders.

Dick Jalkut, TPx‘s CEO, said Pensare is a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a “blank check” firm that looks for companies to acquire and bring to the public market.

Agents will continue to work with the same channel managers they do today and the TPx management team will remain the same, he said.

TelePacific Communications rebranded as TPx in spring 2017 and provides UC and cloud-focused managed IT services, including cloud connectivity, SD-WAN and managed security, with about 30,000 customers nationwide in more than 53,000 locations.

TPx’s Jim Delis

In a Q&A with Channel Partners, Jim Delis, TPx’s senior vice president of national channel development, tells us more about reaction from partners and what to expect when the deal closes.

Channel Partners: Has going public been a goal for TPx?

Jim Delis: Yes, it has actually. My tenure with TPx is just about two years, but the company’s been an organization for 20 years and during that time — in fact, for most of those years — the CEO has been Dick Jalkut, who is known in the industry and has spent a phenomenal career leading telecom organizations. Had there been an opportunity, this would be something that he may have taken in the past, but so far what the company did was to make nine acquisitions in the current private form and then of course in the last several months this started to develop and our CEO jumped on that opportunity.

CP: What’s been the reaction from agents and other partners?

JD: So far, we actually had a partner advisory council just last week and we invited 11 of our top-performing master agents and selling partners for TPx. We had Dick Jalkut join the meeting and did a very detailed review of our intended public venture here with Pensare. And I’ll tell you the reaction was great from that group of partners. Every partner has questions to make sure, “Hey, will I be taken care of? Is my revenue…