“We’ve had a tremendous year and we want to thank our customers who entrusted us with their business,” says Bruce Swail, CEO of GatesAir. “And our team. We never could have done it without them. I couldn’t be prouder of their ability to execute and manage projects.”
GatesAir had its best quarter yet in Q3 2019 and it’s looking forward to things to come.
“We owe a lot of our success this year to the repack. Our customers and team have been instrumental in that, of course,” says Swail. “But the FCC deserves some credit for their administration of the repack program. From our purview, they’ve done a great job managing the program.”
GatesAir has been preparing for the repack for years. This year, it’s been executing operations and delivering the systems. Though the repack is a one-time rush of projects, Swail doesn’t think work will return immediately to normal levels of TV business when the repack is over.
“We think there will be an echo,” Swail says. He explained that broadcasters in the U.S. have deferred maintenance and upgrades of stations for the past few years because of the repack. “We think there will be more projects than the historical rate as the stations work to catch up. We look forward to seeing what that looks like and how we can help.”
GatesAir also focused this year on their international expansion.
In June 2019, the company announced the acquisition of the Italian company, ONEtastic. “We targeted it for the international markets in low-power TV,” Swail says. “But it also brings us some capabilities in radio that we didn’t have.”
Swail won’t predict any acquisitions for 2020, but said the company is always on the lookout for opportunities that would be a good fit. On the product side, the company’s Intraplex line had a great year, too. “They keep winning best of class awards at the trade shows. They keep winning industry awards for innovation,” Swail says. “Our products team is always finding new ways to do things that add a lot of value to our broadcast clients.”
GatesAir is a U.S.-based company with majority of employees living in the United States. Its product manufacturing occurs in the U.S., as does most of its R&D.
By Kristen Stelzer for Inside Towers
November 5, 2019
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