In the end, Ross Video’s total year-over-year revenue gain amounted to just three per cent – far below the company’s annual growth average of 17 per cent over the previous three decades. But it was an increase nonetheless, and the streak remains intact at 34 years and counting.
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Hours before millions of Canadians were glued to their screens in the hope of witnessing the Toronto Blue Jays clinch a World Series championship on Oct. 31, David Ross was engrossed in a different kind of live drama.
The CEO of Ross Video was watching his firm’s incoming sales figures with an eagle eye. The company’s fiscal year happens to end on the final day of October, and on that Friday morning, Ross Video’s impressive streak of 33 consecutive years of revenue growth was at risk of ending.
Unlike the Blue Jays, who saw their dreams of a title die with losses to the Los Angeles Dodgers that Friday evening and the following night, Ross Video came through when it mattered. The company churned out $20 million in sales on the final day of the fiscal year, squeaking past 2024’s final revenue total by just a few million dollars.
In the end, Ross Video’s total year-over-year revenue gain amounted to just three per cent – far below the company’s annual growth average of 17 per cent over the previous three decades. But it was an increase nonetheless, and the streak remains intact at 34 years and counting.
“I think I might have had a drink at the end of the night because it was just so nerve-wracking,” Ross said with a chuckle during an interview with OBJ on Wednesday afternoon. “It felt a little like the Jays game, except we won. The stakes were high.”
Indeed, while Ross Video technology can be found in sports stadiums around the world, the ultra-competitive space it inhabits isn’t all fun and games. The company founded by David’s father John more than 50 years ago has gained a global reputation for its cutting-edge video production technology, but its fiscal 2025 did not get off to a promising start.
“We had plans, and then Trump got elected,” Ross said flatly. “It became pretty interesting, actually.”
The incoming U.S. president quickly threatened to levy tariffs against many of the country’s biggest trading partners, including Canada. That dealt a heavy blow to companies such as Ross that export most of their products.
“A lot of our customers played a (game of) wait-and-see,” Ross explained. “I think there was probably a bit of a worry that if they ordered a product from Canada, that suddenly they’d be paying tariffs. There was a lot of confusion.”
And so a roller-coaster 2025 began.
“Our first four months (sales) were seriously down,” Ross said. “The next four months were the best in our company's history. We were just banging out record months one after another. And then it sort of levelled out to something that looked like we might not grow. That’s a significant thing when we’ve been doing it for 33 consecutive years. I didn’t want to see that string break.”
Improving win rate
Ross says a couple of factors played into the turnaround.
While he contends that a “lack of business confidence” among customers who tightened their pursestrings in “an uncertain tariff environment” hampered sales in the early aftermath of Trump’s election, the company’s win rate steadily improved as fiscal 2025 rolled on.
That sales surge was due in part to a depreciating Canadian dollar that made Ross Video’s technology more attractive to buyers in the U.S. and Europe, Ross said.
Meanwhile, fears that manufactured goods such as Ross’s audio and video equipment would get hit with punitive tariffs in the U.S. were largely unfounded, since most of the firm’s products still fall under the free-trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, he added.
“The financial reality for an export business is actually really good right now,” Ross said. “We probably should be the envy of the world.”
In addition, Ross made a strategic decision midway through the fiscal year to beef up investments in R&D and sales, launching a hiring spree that’s expected to see the firm add about 100 new employees to its existing 1,500-person head count over the next 12 months.
“That push is going to continue all the way through 2026,” he said.
Always aggressive when it comes to growth through acquisitions, Ross Video also doubled down on its M&A strategy in 2025, buying three companies that expanded its expertise and service offerings in both audio and video.
In January, Ross acquired a cutting-edge cable camera system called EagleEye from a Swiss startup. Ross describes EagleEye as a more modern, less expensive alternative to Ross’s current Spidercam, which dangles from suspension wires above stadiums and other big venues to provide high-res views of concerts, sporting events and other major gatherings and is used in performances by artists such as Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Metallica.
“That’s going to, I think, turbocharge our Spidercam business going into next year,” he said of the EagleEye acquisition.
$1B revenue goal
In September, Ross acquired LAMA, a Dutch startup that specializes in advanced audio production software. The move bolsters Ross’s lineup of audio-mixing tools and gives it a stronger foothold in the audio market, Ross said.
“They were hesitant to become part of Ross because they had an exciting road map where they wanted to go,” he said of LAMA. “But we were able to convince them that they could do that faster and better as part of Ross.”
And last month, Ross purchased Ioversal, a German company that makes high-end video-playback technology used to deliver “immersive experiences” in places such as Parliament Hill’s Centre Block, where it powers a multimedia production for visitors.
The move into so-called “experiential” technology “could be one of the most transformative acquisitions that we have done in a long time,” Ross explained, and it’s another way his company aims to strengthen its end-to-end live production capabilities.
Ross suggests he has no plans to ease up on the throttle as he pushes toward his “big, hairy audacious goal” of getting Ross Video to $1 billion in annual revenues by 2030.
It’s about halfway there now. Ross, who is also the firm’s majority shareholder, thought long and hard about taking his company public as a way of raising more capital to fund its ongoing expansion, but soured on the idea because he felt the public markets put too much emphasis on maximizing profits and EBITDA margins at the expense of new product development.
An IPO is “really on the back burner right now,” he said Wednesday.
Instead, Ross is looking to the private-equity markets to help bankroll Ross’s future growth. He spoke to one potential PE investor on Tuesday about buying a minority stake in the firm.
“I like to invest in the future,” he said. “I like to chase what customers are demanding of us. I like to go after the really cool, big new ideas. And that requires investment. We’re still profitable and we’re going to continue to do it profitably. But some of the greatest companies out there didn’t try to maximize profit for a while because they just had so many opportunities in front of them.
“I think a lot of people are nervous about what 2026 is going to look like. If you have the financial strength and momentum of a company like Ross … the bottom of the market is a really cool time to invest if you do it very carefully. I’m excited about what we’re doing.”
And as for that big, audacious, billion-dollar-revenue goal, Ross believes it’s there for the taking.
“I still have a plan to get there. Part of what we did in the second half of 2025 and what we’re doing in 2026 and the acquisitions we’re making, those are all puzzle pieces that are dropping into place to make it happen.” 
