Thrive Continues 2022 Southeast Gains With Third Acquisition

‘The Gulf Coast, west coast region (of Florida), and central-to-Jacksonville region of Florida is really our goal,’ Thrive CEO Rob Stephenson.

Thrive continues to grow its presence in the southeastern United States with its third acquisition in the last three months.

Thrive, a Foxborough, Mass.-based managed service provider, this week announced the acquisition of SouthTech, a managed technology solutions provider based in Sarasota, Fla. With the acquisition, Thrive gained a total of 200 customers from SouthTech, bringing their total to about 1,500, Thrive CEO Rob Stephenson told CRN.

SouthTech provides managed services, cloud and hosting solutions, backup and disaster recovery services, unified communications, compliance auditing, and data security, according to the company’s website.

Financial terms of the deal for SouthTech were not disclosed.

[Related story: Why Fast-Growing MSP Thrive Is Betting Big On The South ]

The SouthTech acquisition comes two months after Thrive, a member of the Elite 150 in CRN’s 2022 Managed Service Provider 500 list, acquired InCare Technologies, a Birmingham, Ala.-based MSP. In February, Thrive acquired Miami-based Preemo.

SouthTech is one of the largest managed service providers in the Sarasota, Fla. area, according to Stephenson, and that made it an attractive candidate for acquisition as Thrive was looking to establish a presence in that part of the state. The long-term goal for Thrive is to be in all the major cities of Florida, Stephenson said.

“We have a lot of clients there, four or five of our largest clients have presences or main offices in Florida, and we’ve had a number of employees move there,” he said. “From our perspective, we now have a presence on both coasts of the state.”

Stephenson said the company next will probably look at acquiring firms closer to Orlando or Jacksonville and growing organically in southeastern Florida.

“The Gulf Coast, west coast region, central-to-Jacksonville region of Florida is really our goal,” he said.

With the acquisition, Thrive gained an additional 60 employees from SouthTech, bringing their total to about 650 people, Stephenson said.

Thrive is planning on making three or four more acquisitions this year, he said. Stephenson said he anticipates the company growing organically by about 15 percent in 2022 and via acquisition by another 15-to-30 percent.

“We’ll probably end up in a blended 40-to-50 percent growth this year between those components of organic and acquisition growth,” he said.

Stephenson said he expects Thrive to take in between $180 million and $250 million of revenue this year, inclusive of acquisitions, compared to $137 million in 2021.