ISP Community Fibre Gets £100m Funding Boost for UK FTTP Build

London focused broadband ISP CommunityFibre, which now covers 720,000 UK premises with their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network (up from 675k in Oct 2022), has today confirmed that Macquarie Asset Management has provided £100 million of debt financing to help support the provider’s rollout.

The operator, which also owns ISP Box Broadband – a full fibre network that covers parts of Surrey and West Sussex in England (here), is aiming to reach 2.4 million UK premises by 2024 – that’s more than half of all the homes in London (3.7 million). Box Broadband alone also holds a “goal of delivering fibre to in excess of 250,000 homes by the end of 2024.”

In terms of funding, it’s getting a little tricky to keep track of CF’s many announcements on this front. The operator was originally backed by £90m from private investors and Government schemes (e.g. Amber Infrastructure and RPMI Railpen), followed later by £400m via Warburg Pincus and DTCP, and £100m from a syndicate of existing and new banks.

Back in October 2022 they also announced a new finance facility of £985m, which was made up of £685m in committed facilities and a further £300m uncommitted accordion (here). As we understand it, today’s announcement of £100m in debt financing relates to part of that £985 million financing package.

Tom Van Rijsewijk, Managing Director at Macquarie Asset Management, said:

“With the increasing digitisation of our society and economy, access to faster and more reliable broadband has never been more important. We are very pleased to be able to provide this financing to Community Fibre, offering an opportunity for our investors to help more communities across London access ultrafast broadband.”

This investment marks the team’s first financing to a UK fibre network operator. The transaction follows a suite of investment activity in the EMEA region’s digital infrastructure sector, including a €125 million debt investment to support SIRO’s network expansion in Ireland. But more importantly it shows that CF’s investors are happy with the progress the operator continues to make.