Talk of a Sale Surrounds UK Full Fibre AltNet Provider Trooli

Kent-based broadband ISP Trooli, which aims to deploy a full fibre (FTTP) network to 1 million UK premises by the end of 2024 (in August they reported 275,000 completed), has attracted fresh rumours of a possible sale after they reportedly appointed a business sale and restructuring specialist, David Duggins, to their Board.

At present the provider is known to be building across a sizeable number of towns and villages in Derbyshire, Kent, East Sussex, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire and Suffolk. As part of this, Trooli were initially aiming to reach 400,000 premises across around 300 towns and villages by Dec 2022, but we’ve so far been unable to confirm how close they got to this.

The project was initially supported by an investment of €30m from the Connecting Europe Broadband Fund (Cube Infrastructure Managers) and £5m from NatWest, which was given a huge boost in 2021 by a new £67.5m debt facility agreement via a consortium of commercial lenders, facilitated by the CEBF (here).

However, in order to continue their build, they’ll require much more funding, which is why we started to hear talk of efforts to raise another £200m at the start of 2022 (here). In theory, the provider could have also used this to extend their medium-term build target to 2.1 million UK premises by the end of 2024. But so far there have been no big funding announcements, and a full year has now passed since that report.

Trooli’s Future

We asked Trooli about all this last month and a spokesperson confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that they were in “various exciting conversations about our future growth“, before adding that such talks were naturally confidential. But we were also told that they are planning to share more about their growth plans for 2023 and beyond “in the near future“.

Speculation over Trooli’s future has now accelerated, again, after TelcoTitans reported that they’d hired former EY Restructuring Partner David Duggins to the Board. A weekend report on The Sunday Times (paywall) further claimed that Trooli were still looking for an equity investor to fund their fibre rollout (nothing new), but were also “sounding out interest from rivals“.

In the meantime, Trooli will no doubt be feeling the same strains as many other network operators right now, not least in terms of rising build costs (suppliers, energy, inflation etc.) and growing pressures from investors to deliver viable take-up. The ISP also lacks a cheaper entry-level broadband tier, which may hinder their appeal a bit if they lack an option that can peel customers away from budget FTTC tiers.

On top of that, they also exist in an aggressively competitive market. Only last week the CEO of BT Group, Philip Jansen, warned that AltNet builds would “end in tears” (some definitely will – they won’t all survive), before adding that “there is only going to be one national network“. Talk that should alarm Ofcom and politicians, but which also seems to ignore the existence of Virgin Media’s (VMO2) national network.

Overall, Trooli has managed to cover a lot of premises, given its currently limited level of investment (we assume a PIA heavy build). But satisfying investors and attracting new funding in today’s market is starting to get a lot harder, although Trooli are arguably in a better position than some AltNets to achieve a positive outcome. But whether that involves consolidation, an equity sale, or something else, remains to be seen.