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Maintel plots £48.5m cloud and data expansion with acquisition

Communications contractor Maintel Holdings plc has announced a conditional £48.5m agreement to acquire Surrey-based Azzurri Communications.

However, the London-based corporate technology company, which announced the potential deal on the London Stock Exchange this morning, has outlined that any deal for Azzurri is dependent on a £24m share raise.

If successful, the acquisition will see Maintel, who count Vodafone and Avaya as clients, look to take advantage of the Surrey firm’s expertise in cloud and data, along with its telecommunications and telephony services focused on the UK SME market.

With both companies having expertise in security and networking, managed services, and mobile, amongst others, there is significant overlap between the two businesses.

Eddie Buxton, Chief Executive of Maintel, commented: “This is a highly complementary and transformational acquisition which we expect to be immediately earnings enhancing.

“The acquisition will accelerate Maintel’s shift into Hosted Cloud and Data, ensuring that we are well positioned to exploit these high growth areas of the Unified Communications market, and enabling us to provide our customers with an even broader product offering than we do today.

“In addition, it will build scale in Managed Services, continuing the shift in business mix which Maintel has been driving following our previous acquisitions.

He added: “We are delighted to be adding Azzurri Communications’ impressive and complementary capabilities to Maintel’s. Azzurri Communications’ position has strengthened notably in recent times, which is a testament to the leadership of Steve Andrews, Chris Jagusz and Andrew Marshall.”

Chris Jagusz, Chief Executive of Azzurri Communications, added: “We are excited to be joining Maintel at a time of such rapid innovation in the industry. We have very complementary product sets and we look forward to offering our customers an enhanced range of services.

“We believe this pairing will significantly enhance our impact in the market and increase opportunities for employees.”

finnCap Limited are to act as advisor in the deal, while Oakley Capital Limited are acting as financial advisors. London-based Arma Partners is acting as sole financial advisor to Azzurri.

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