ADT Inc.

What does ADT own?

ADT owns the master brand, its monitoring centers and service network, the ADT Plus platform, and its 6.1 million-subscriber customer base. Its main assets are the subscriber contracts and infrastructure rather than physical property.

Is ADT publicly traded?

Yes. ADT Inc. trades on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker ADT after re-listing in January 2018.

Who founded ADT?

The company formed in 1874 through a consolidation of telegraph messenger companies as American District Telegraph, so it has no single founder.

Where is ADT headquartered?

Boca Raton, Florida, at 1501 Yamato Road, its base for decades.

How many brands does ADT own?

Effectively one master brand. Acquired product names including Blue by ADT and Lifeshield have been folded into the single ADT identity.

Who owns ADT?

Public shareholders, with State Farm holding roughly 15 percent and Google roughly 6 percent as strategic investors. Apollo Global Management, which took it private in 2016, has sold down its stake.

Does ADT still do commercial security?

No. It sold ADT Commercial to GTCR in 2023; that business now operates as Everon. ADT Inc. serves residential and small business customers only.

American District Telegraph was formed in Baltimore in 1874 by consolidating dozens of telegraph messenger services. Its call-box network let businesses summon messengers, watchmen, and emergency response over telegraph lines, inventing remote monitoring as a commercial service decades before electronic alarms existed.

The company evolved with the technology: call boxes became electric alarm circuits, which became central-station monitored burglar alarms. By the mid-twentieth century ADT was the standard in American commercial and residential security.

The conglomerate era brought multiple owners. Hawley Group, controlled by UK industrialist Michael Ashcroft, acquired ADT in 1987 and expanded it aggressively. Tyco International bought it in 1997 for $11.6 billion in stock, and when Tyco broke apart in 2012, ADT emerged again as a standalone public company.

Apollo Global Management took it private in 2016 for approximately $6.9 billion including assumed debt, merging it with Protection 1 and ASG Security into the industry's largest monitoring platform. The combined company returned to the NYSE in January 2018.

Strategic investment reshaped the company again. Google put in $450 million in 2020 for a roughly 6 percent stake and a Nest hardware partnership. State Farm invested $1.2 billion in 2022 for about 15 percent, aligning the country's largest home insurer with its largest security monitor.

CEO Jim DeVries, running the company since late 2020, executed the refocus: selling ADT Commercial to GTCR in 2023 and exiting the solar business in 2024 after that diversification failed to meet returns. Fiscal 2025 revenue was $5.1 billion, up 5 percent, with a new $1.5 billion buyback authorization announced in March 2026.

ADT's service is itself a social function: residential and small business safety. Its ESG reporting covers workforce safety for field technicians, customer data privacy, and community programs.

The material ethics issue is surveillance-adjacent privacy. A company operating cameras and sensors inside millions of homes handles sensitive data and employee access continuously, making its privacy controls a genuine operational obligation rather than a reporting exercise.

The Aviles case is the defining scandal: a technician who accessed over 200 customers' cameras between roughly 2015 and 2020, pleaded guilty in 2021, sentenced to 52 months in prison in 2022, and settled by ADT for $16 million in 2023. The company reformed technician access controls in response.

Trademark enforcement is a recurring activity: ADT has sued competitors including Ring over signage and branding it claimed copied the blue octagon, settling those cases confidentially.

The industry-level scrutiny covers door-to-door sales practices, contract terms and early termination fees, and false-alarm fees charged by municipalities, the standard regulatory friction of the monitored alarm business.