PowerSecure International, a Wake Forest energy services company, has signed a distribution deal with a firm run by the son of its top executive and founder.
Under the agreement, Apex Controls will sell PowerSecure's LED lighting for refrigerated grocery cases through 2015. Apex Controls is run by Jonathan Hinton, son of PowerSecure CEO Sidney Hinton, left, and PowerSecure's former sales executive, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
PowerSecure will pay Apex Controls commissions based on sales, an initial fee of $200,000, plus $200,000 more in January 2010 and $100,000 annually from 2011 to 2015.
The deal also restricts Jonathan Hinton from competing with PowerSecure's other businesses through Oct. 1, 2015.
The agreement will help PowerSecure "by increasing and broadening its marketing and sales efforts with grocery chains, retail drug chains and convenience store chains," the company wrote in the SEC filing.
Revenue from PowerSecure's EfficientLights' products increased by more than 700 percent during the first half of 2009, compared to the same period last year, the company reported. PowerSecure also sells backup diesel generators to grocery chains and other customers, a business that has been hurt by the economic downturn.
PowerSecure's stock fell 20 cents Tuesday to close at $5.10, but is up 55 percent so far this year.
PowerSecure employs 350 people, including 150 in the Triangle. Sidney Hinton moved the company to Wake Forest from Denver, Colo., in 2007.
Hinton is a devout Christian who dedicates some of his spare time to The Other Six Days, a ministry that helps Christians practice their faith in the workplace. He is scheduled to speak at the group's men's summit later this month.
Assistant Business Editor Alan M. Wolf joined the N&O in 1999 covering the business of health care. He became an editor in 2001, and helps oversee the paper's daily business coverage and Sunday Work&Money section. He lives in Clayton with his wife and two children. Reach him at 919-829-4572 or