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Iron Mountain Inc., the Boston data protection and storage services company that has been pushing into new digital and overseas markets, will get its first new top executive in a quarter century.
The company yesterday said Bob Brennan, 47, president and chief operating officer, will take the reins as chief executive at the annual meeting June 5. He'll succeed Richard Reese, 61, who grew the company from $3 million in annual sales when he joined in 1981 to projected sales of $3 billion in 2008. Reese will stay on as executive chairman, focusing on new products and training.
Iron Mountain's change at the top comes as an explosion of information, coupled with government regulations requiring businesses to hold onto it, have accelerated its expansion opportunities.
At the same time, the company faces stiffer competition from technology giants, such as IBM Corp. and EMC Corp.
"As they get bigger, they're going to be facing bigger competition," warned Benchmark Co. analyst Edward J. Atorino.
Brennan, who joined Iron Mountain in 2004 when it acquired his previous company, Framingham's Connected Corp., cited the rapid growth in Iron Mountain's digital business, even with the US economy slowing. The company, which has operated in the Americas and Europe, is also moving into new markets such as Russia and China.
"We'll be very aggressive about expanding our digital services and expanding into new geographies," Brennan said yesterday.
Iron Mountain, which began by storing paper records for businesses in vast underground vaults, has branched into storing, backing up, and archiving digital data.
"The world has changed over the past few years, and we've become dramatically more relevant," Reese said yesterday.
But fourth-quarter net income at Iron Mountain slipped to $28 million, or 14 cents a share, on revenue of $727 million, from income of $37.1 million, or 18 cents a share, on revenue of $609.5 million a year earlier, largely because of one-time costs associated with a string of acquisitions. Shares of Iron Mountain retreated $3.60, or 10.5 percent, to $30.58 on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday.
Reese, a native of Union, S.C., who has been one of the longest-serving chief executives of a public company in the Boston area, said he has been working closely with New York native Brennan for several years to assure a smooth transition at Iron Mountain.
"You look in the mirror and you look at the gray hair, and you realize you better do some planning," Reese said.
Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.
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