TalkTalk’s Wholesale Arm PXC Reportedly Receives Bids from Several Parties
The heavily indebted UK broadband focused TalkTalk Group has reportedly received bids for its wholesale arm, PlatformX Communications (PXC), which is said to value the company in the “hundreds of millions of pounds“. The interest is said to have come from Africa-focused Telecel, as well as others like private equity firm Epiris, which has teamed up with PXC executive chairman Tom O’Hagan.
In case the name Tom O’Hagan seems familiar then that’s because he recently helped acquire business provider Entanet from full fibre operator CityFibre (here) and appears to have big plans for the UK business connectivity market. Suffice to say that acquiring PXC, which TalkTalk has been trying to sell since they demerged their businesses (Talk Talk Consumer, PXC [Wholesale] and Talk Talk Business Direct), would make a lot of sense.
According to Bloomberg‘s sources, the deliberations are said to be ongoing and there’s currently no certainty about whether this will end in a transaction. The news follows shortly after other reports indicated that broadband and mobile operator Vodafone (VodafoneThree) had tabled a bid for TalkTalk’s consumer business (here), which is another pairing that would seem to be quite complementary.
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At the time a spokesperson for VodafoneThree said they are currently “very happy with our organic strategy” for growing fixed broadband (they’re one of the fastest growing retail ISPs), but would “always keep a close eye on movements in the market and the sector“. TalkTalk itself has declined to comment on both reports, as is normal in such situations.
The TalkTalk Group has certainly had a rough few years and in September 2024 secured a crucial refinancing package worth around £400m (here and here), which saved it from the immediate risk of a default on its debts (extended debt maturities to September 2027). This was later followed up by a £120m funding deal to help tackle ongoing financial pressures (here).
Since then the provider has suffered more redundancies and also refreshed their consumer brand in order to deal with a shrinking broadband base (here), but there may yet be light at the end of what has become a long tunnel.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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PXC has, for some time, been the unit most likely to be the first to find a buyer. I’m wondering, though, if the unit is sold, what impact that would have on the sustainability of the rest of the business group?
The two anchor customers for PXC are TalkTalk Consumer and TalkTalk Business. If the former goes to Vodafone as reportedly under negotiation and the latter being sold outside of the group too as planned, it creates a challenge for PXC. Add in they are in around 3,000 Openreach exchanges so will need to move out of the @2k of exchanges Openreach plan on closing under their Exchange Exit programme where PXC will have a presence. This will be made all the more complex if TT Consumer and TTB sit outside of the TalkTalk Group as the buyers will have their own strategies in play.
Add in Sky have the most competitive Ethernet pricing in the channel at present, and Zen are creating a true network agnostic broadband platform to allow a wide range of alt-net choices meaning PXC will have their work cut out as a standalone business. If Tom O’Hagen does acquire them and integrates with Entanet, then there is a strong scale player in the market and he does have a great track record from building up Virtual1, but this feels a big challenging job.
@Ben
The challenges facing PXC exist no matter what happens around the breakup of the TalkTalk Group. PXC has something like 1,000 client and partner businesses. The Epiris bid values the operation at around GBP 400mn. There are plenty of opportunities within the Epiris portfolio to grow the business.
If PXC is sold first, then this may undermine the sustainability of the Consumer operation in the medium term. That is my line of thinking.