Transcript
The Birth of Asurion
Will
Kevin, in our last conversation we talked about the first five years of Asurion's history, from the acquisition of Road Rescue in 1995 to TA coming in as a director in very early 2001. Put some numbers around that. You started with $8.5 million of revenue and $1.2 million in EBITDA coming entirely from the roadside assistance business.
In 2000 you had $78 million in revenue and $25 million in EBITDA, with around 35% of that coming from handset insurance. Okay, so we're now officially in the TA era, early 2001, and it just seems as though that early '01-'02 era represents a step function change for the company. A lot of transformation then and maybe a place to start. Kevin, if you don't mind, is with the actual renaming of the company. How did all that come about?
Kevin
The story of our names is an amusing one if anything. When we bought the company in 1995 we bought Road Rescue Inc. We were known as in the marketplace Mr. Rescue, but it was Road Rescue Inc. When we bought the Merrimac Group, we merged the two companies together. It was one holding company and we come up with the very creative name Road Rescue Merrimac.