Two rural telco-focused accounting firms to combine operations

Moss Adams LLP, an accounting firm that has a specialty in small rural telcos, announced this week that it will combine operations with Warinner, Gesinger & Associates LLC, an accounting firm focused exclusively on the small telco market, effective September 1. Moss Adams has a staff of over 1,700 that includes more than 220 partners and is the nation’s eleventh largest accounting firm.

The move will give Moss Adams’ telecom group greater geographic reach, said Rick Betts, telecommunications groups leader for Moss Adams, in an interview. Moss Adams traditionally has focused primarily on customers in the west, while WGA, an 18-person company based in Kansas, focuses primarily on the Midwestern and Eastern regions.

WGA, he said, will gain “brand credibility and methodologies of a large firm that fundamentally does what they do in the telecom world.”

WGA principals Bill Warinner and Jarret Rea will join Moss Adams as partners, and Andrew Denzer will join as a director, along with WGA’s client service staff and employees.

Moss Adams is part of the Telergee Alliance, a nationwide affiliation of accounting firms focused on the small telco industry—and traditionally each member has focused on a different part of the country. Asked how the WGA deal would impact that alliance, Betts said there is already some overlap among alliance firms and that “we’ve talked this week to most of the firms and their response has been favorable.”

Betts said the addition of WGA clients to the Telergee Alliance should expand the base of companies that participate in the annual Telergee Benchmarking Report that surveys small telcos about their business operations (CP: Telergee study: Small telcos’ profit struggle intensifies).

Traditionally that survey has about 200 respondents, with the majority coming from companies that are clients of Telergee Alliance firms. That’s about a quarter of the nation’s 800-odd small independent telcos—and Betts said Telergee firms actually represent more than 200 of those companies because not every client participates in the survey.