MiX telematics is continuing its US expansion with the announcement that it has opened a new office in Houston, Texas. It will be staffed mostly by accounts and client care teams, so will be more of an administrative building than anything else, but it still improves the company’s coverage throughout the United States and normalises the time zones with which its support team are available.
“Our company is rapidly expanding its sales and customer service operations in North America,” said Pete Allen, executive vice president of Sales at MiX Telematics. “We are committed to our ‘service for life’ approach which means collaboratively delivering the results our customers expect and proactive support of both hardware and software for the life of the customer’s contract. With so many oil and gas companies located in Texas, it made sense for us to have a major client care presence here on the ground, so we can work side by side with our customers to help them with all of their fleet and mobile asset needs.”
The new facility is located within Houston’s Greenpoint district, which makes up around 12 square miles on the edge of the city. While some of it does stray into the city limits, technically most of it is on the outskirts. It will join a number of other companies in the area, which already houses over 70,000 employees, many of whom operate in similar industries to MiX Telematics. In-fact, in 2010, Expansion Solutions Magazine declared Greenpoint as one of the top five locations in the US for operating a logistics company.
This latest move may go some way to restoring confidence in the company, which was recently rated by the Zacks investment research company, as a sell, rather than a hold stock. While it didn’t offer much of an explanation for the change of heart, it may have been more to do with Zacks than MiX, as there were several other companies it suggested its clients sell. Other investment firms too, like Canaccord Ingenuity, kept the MiX stock at a suggested buy rating of around $14 per share, so it clearly had quite a different take on the state of MiX Telematics affairs.
Indeed, as long as the move to Houston isn’t a cost cutting measure, expansion is usually a good indicator of strong internal finances and development, so confidence in the business should remain high for the near future.
