Rexel USA President and CEO Roger Little spoke with tED magazine on his first day in the position last December.
Six months later, Little agreed to talk with tED magazine again to discuss what he did over the first six months, his dedication to training employees and using digital products for the future, and today he discussed Rexel USA’s merger and acquisition strategy.
Little recently spoke with tED magazine Publisher Scott Costa about future acquisition strategies.
Mergers and acquisitions
Costa: Let’s talk mergers and acquisitions, which continue to be a hot topic throughout our supply chain, not just on the distributor side but certainly on the manufacturer side as well. At the beginning of June, Rexel completed its acquisition of Talley, which is an interesting acquisition because it’s really a value-add acquisition. Explain to me Rexel’s commitment to value adds as a distributor.
Little: We’re very excited to have closed the Talley deal on June 3. It’s a family business, well over 40 years old, and it was started by a husband and wife with their four sons, who took it over. They were looking to divest in the business, not necessarily retire out of the business.
In fact, all four brothers are still working in the business. We see it, to your point, as a value-add business. It gets us into the wireless broadband space which has been a hot topic for some time now. It’s not a new business but it is continuing to evolve from 3G to LTE to 5G and there’s obviously conversations about 6G and beyond. Rexel really likes the idea of value-add, and we see that as being our differentiator moving forward.
We want to add value, we want to distribute products, we want to continue to sell electrical, datacom and utility products to our customer base, but we also would like to add value to it. When we went out and talked to folks in the industry, whether it be customers or supplier partners, Talley just kept coming up and it became obvious that the value-add from Talley brings us something that we’re very interested in. It’s something we understand, but we would sure like help understanding it even deeper and further.
So, it is a great acquisition from that standpoint. And then to have the family members still involved in helping us understand and move that business forward is a great combination.
Costa: I don’t want to force myself into the Rexel boardroom by any stretch, but I can assume that if value-add is going to be a priority, mergers and acquisitions is going to remain a high priority.
Little: I can tell you I have spent a great deal of my first six or seven months on it, and I’m sure I’m going to spend many years focused on that topic. It is definitely very public that we will continue to make strategic decisions, and we have a focus in North America, specifically in the US. We see a lot of acquisition opportunities and a lot of opportunities to add value to the products and services that we already offer. It’s not going away, and I think that this is a great market to continue to look for upcoming M&A.
Costa: Last question. Give us a little insight into how that value marries into Rexel’s execution. We know you execute and take care of customers, and now adding value just builds on that foundation.
Little: Absolutely. We are not getting away from the core or electrical distribution part of what Rexel does and what got us to where we are today. This is to augment and supplement the core and, quite honestly, we want to differentiate ourselves within the core space. There are a lot of players in the space, a lot of great competitors, and we are always looking for a way to differentiate ourselves. I think this is a good way for us to do it. It’s something that’s become more DNA-like to us.
We just had our Capital Market Days a few weeks ago in France, and we talked about our midterm strategy and value-added services. But we’re not walking away from the core. We’ll continue to do that. In North America we see datacom and utility being very close or at least adjacent to our core. We’re interested in datacom and Talley is a good example of that. We’ll continue to build out that space and get deeper and wider as we do that.