Full Fibre UK ISP Vorboss Acquired by Fern Trading Limited

Network builder and ISP Vorboss, which some time ago spoke of plans to deploy their own business “full fibre” broadband network to 250,000 premises in large UK urban areas by the end of 2022 (here), has been acquired by Fern Trading Limited (Fern Fibre Limited) for an as yet undisclosed sum.

If the name Fern Trading seems like a familiar one then that’s because they’ve also acquired controlling stakes in several other Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) builders, including Jurassic Fibre in the South West of England and Swish Fibre in the Home Counties (i.e. the counties that surround London, including Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey and Sussex).

The deal, which saw Fern scoop up more than 75% of the company’s shares, actually occurred on 27th November 2020 (here), but they don’t appear to have issued a press release about it (none that we could find). Despite this the agreement did get a brief mention in Fern’s annual report.

Fern Trading Statement

On 27 November 2020, Fern Fibre Limited, a subsidiary of Fern Trading Limited acquired 100% of Vorboss Limited. Given that this has been a recent acquisition the identifiable assets and liabilities at completion and goodwill have yet to be finalised.

The Directors therefore consider it impractical to be able to disclose this information in these financial statements. The most recent management accounts as at the 30 September 2020, showed aggregated net assets of £2,100,000.

Fern’s report also noted that they had so far deployed just over £40 million of capital into their two fibre businesses to date (Jurassic Fibre and Swish Fibre). “This makes up 2% of the Fern Group today, and as these businesses scale, they will continue to represent a small but growing part of Fern’s overall activities,” said the report.

We attempted to contact Vorboss about this on Friday, in the hope of securing some extra details, but they have yet to respond. We’ll update again if they reply.