Protection One ends alliance

LAWRENCE, Kan.--It's got to be one of the longest names in residential security, "Bellsouth Security Systems from Protection One," and now it's going away. By this summer, the operations in the nine Southeastern states that used this moniker will be plain old Protection One, as the company is known in the rest of the United States. BellSouth Security Systems from Protection One is a marketing alliance, formed in 2001 so P1 could market security services to the nine Southeastern states served by BellSouth. The rebranding will be complete on or before June 30, 2008. The company said it does not expect the rebranding to affect existing customers, RMR or have a material impact on its combined net cash flow from operating and investing activities. It's the right time to make the transition, said Kim Lessner, chief marketing officer for Protection One. "BellSouth was sold [in December 2006 to AT&T] and the BellSouth name is no longer being used," she noted. "This, in conjunction with our new marketing team coming on board, makes this an opportune time" (see accompanying story, this page). The actual transition to Protection One's own sales and marketing operations will not be too complicated, but it does mean that all "customers [will be] receiving new yards signs and decals and a new look of their bill," Lessner said. Richard Ginsburg, chief executive officer of Protection One, said in a prepared statement,"[We] are optimistic that we will be able to more than replace the flow of new RMR additions that were generated by the BellSouth marketing alliance." In its September 2007 10-Q financial statement, Protection One estimated that, "for the nine and three-month periods ended September 30, 2007, RMR additions directly attributable to leads from the alliance were $144,000 and $48,000, respectively, or 8 percent in both periods, of new retail RMR additions. As of September 30, 2007, the company had $20.6 million retail RMR and $26.7 million RMR in total."