Barnes Buchanan, held this year February 9-10 at the Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla., is indisputably the premier conference for discussing the financial side of the security alarm industry. In less than two days the conference manages to pack in a lot of information to process and this year was no exception. The good news is that the big takeaways were mostly positive, in spite of going on year three of a worldwide pandemic, ongoing supply chain issues, a looming recession and inflation issues.
For one thing, lenders still like the security industry. While the amount of capital may be slightly reduced, the interest of both banks and non-bank lenders is still active, said John Robuck, head of the security finance lending business at Capital One, in the first session of the conference, the Lender Panel. “The RMR lending space is a niche product. We are seeing more non-banks getting involved in this space. There continues to be availability of capital, but it is a little different than in past years. The last few months really focused on relationships.”