In the early 1980s the Omaha-based company Scoular Grain was a growing agribusiness led by Nebraska grain industry executive Marshall Faith. Faith, along with several other investors, had acquired what was then Scoular-Bishop Grain Company in 1967[5] and expanded its operations from three grain elevators to dozens of locations in multiple states, and was beginning to branch out beyond grain warehousing.[6][7] On 9 April 1984 the company created a new subsidiary incorporated under the name Scoular Information Services with the goal of improving communications with farmers. The project was led by Omaha native Roger Brodersen, Scoular's chief operating officer and the executive who supervised new-project development and corporate acquisitions for the company. The subsidiary soon became known as Dataline.[8]
Dataline's chief product was an FM radio receiver unit that would pick up Dataline broadcasts transmitted via sideband signals. Farmers and agribusinesses would buy the receivers to get agricultural information and commodities updates. Dataline's customers preferred to lease the receivers rather than buy them, but Scoular was unwilling to finance the equipment, so Brodersen bought Dataline in 1986 and a year later took its stock public in order to raise the capital necessary to acquire the receivers and to develop other information products. Under the new model, subscribers would receive a radio signal receiver and a video terminal at no charge, and then pay a monthly subscription to receive 24-hour-a-day broadcasts of 20+ pages of market information, weather reports, and analysis. In late 1986, the monthly fees were $17.50 and the service was available in Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. Public broadcasting station WILL-TV in Champaign was one broadcaster that carried the Dataline signal.[9]
At the beginning of 1987 Dataline had 5,300 subscribers; that grew to 10,000 by May[10][11] and 13,500 in ten states by October. In addition to being accessible on terrestrial FM carriers, Dataline was also broadcast from the Galaxy 1 communications satellite. Monthly fees were $19.50 for 65 videotext pages of market quotes, grain and livestock information, commentary, weather, and reports.[12] In September, Dataline partnered with a subsidiary of ConAgra to add an "electronic catalog" feature to their information feed, allowing subscribers to browse farm supplies, equipment, and other products.[13]
On 17 September 1987 the company re-incorporated and was renamed Data Transmission Network.[8]
Expansion (1988–1997)
The company, commonly identified simply as DTN, expanded rapidly through the late 1980s and early 1990s; its operating cash flow grew roughly 30% each year beginning in 1989 and by 1993 was $12.9M.[14] By mid-1994 DTN had roughly 77,000 subscribers, about 60,000 of which were in the agricultural sector; the remainder were mostly in the finance and energy industries.[15] Subscriptions in 1994 were $26 a month; satellite connection was an extra $7/month and a color monitor an extra $20/month.[16] By 1997 it had 152,000 customers, 110,000 of which were in agriculture.[17]
Beginning in the mid-1990s DTN also grew its operations by acquiring other data and meteorology companies. In May 1996 it acquired its chief competitor FarmDayta (formerly Broadcast Partners) of Urbandale, Iowa for $73M, and adopted its 38,500 subscribers.[17] In 1998 DTN merged its weather services division with Minneapolis-based Kavouras, a company founded in 1977 that specialized in radar-based weather reporting and prediction; DTN also acquired Weather Services Corporation (WSC), a
Sale and bankruptcy (1998–2003)
In the late 1990s, DTN entered a period of financial uncertainty, in part due to increasing competition with new free information channels like CNBC, the Weather Channel, and websites run by Farm Journal and Pioneer. In response, DTN sought to expand its customer base by selling a broader array of services, including inventory-tracking for auto dealers, coupon-printing kiosks for grocery stores, fire-alert information for forestry services, and other ventures. DTN gained 7,600 new subscribers but lost 4,500 from its core group of agricultural customers, and its stock fell 38% in 1999.[16]
Since April 1998, DTN had been seeking an organization to buy the 1300-employee company, but after 11 months had not found anyone willing to pay a price that the board felt was appropriate, so in mid-March 1999 founder Roger Brodersen called off the search for a buyer. One week later on 24 March, Brodersen and four other directors resigned and Peter Kamin was named the new chairman. Kamin, the leader of a stockholders group that pressed to sell the company,[20] resumed the search for a buyer.[21]
In April 2000, the New York City-based private equity firm
Revival (2004–2007)
Robert Gordon became president in January and CEO in July 2004. He gradually reduced staff to 675, eliminated redundancies, and pushed a new strategy of selling proprietary data at a premium price. Customers paid larger subscription fees ($100 a month for many weather customers) to receive customized, hourly webcasts based on more precise computer models; ag customers paid roughly 50% more for analyses of issues like Asian soybean rust and avian influenza; and energy customers gained access to online exchanges with real-time fuel prices.[16]
Gordon's strategy proved successful and DTN began to re-expand. In July 2006 DTN acquired St. Louis-based Surface Systems, Inc. (SSI),[24] a company specializing in weather monitors for roads and airport runways, and integrated its customers and its network of 6000 surface sensors into its Meteorlogix division.[25] In 2007 it acquired the majority of the Edmond, Oklahoma company WeatherBank,[26] integrating its energy, transportation, public safety, and agriculture weather forecasting customers into Meteorlogix.
Telvent and Schneider (2008–2016)
On 28 October 2008, Madrid-based IT company Telvent acquired DTN in a $445M all-cash deal. DTN at the time of the acquisition had about 700 employees, 700,000 subscribers, and annual revenues of approximately $180M, with about 90% of its sales derived from its subscription-based services.[29][30] After its acquisition the company became known as Telvent DTN.
Telvent itself was purchased in 2011 by Schneider Electric, a large energy management company based in Rueil-Malmaison, France. Schneider announced in early 2011 that it had reached a deal to acquire Telvent, and in August received regulatory approval to complete the €1.4B acquisition.[31] [32][33]
TBG and recent growth (2017–)
In 2016 Schneider put DTN up for sale after a strategic review found that it wasn't essential to the company.[34] Several firms were interested in purchasing DTN (including London-based Euromoney Institutional Investor[36]), but it was Zürich-based private investment holding TBG that ultimately purchased DTN and in April 2017 completed its acquisition of the company for $900M.[37][38][39]
Since its purchase by TBG, DTN has acquired several smaller corporations or systems:
MeteoGroup, a private Europe-based weather organisation acquired by parent TBG in September 2018,[50]
