CVC Capital Partners Looks to Buy UK Street Works Firm M Group

Infrastructure firm M Group Services, which among other things also caters for the UK and Ireland via its various broadband and mobile focused civil engineering brands (Avonline Networks, magdalene, Morrison and waldon), is reportedly in “advanced talks” with private equity giant CVC Capital Partners over a possible £1.5bn acquisition deal.

M Group’s Telecom Division typically provides a full end-to-end service offering to fixed, private and mobile operators that covers everything from the design, build and maintenance of the telecom infrastructure for key clients like Openreach, Virgin Media, Three UK, Gigaclear, CTIL, Hyperoptic, MBNL and more. But the group also extends into water, energy and transport.

However, a recent report on Sky News claims that Luxembourg-based CVC, which floated on the Euronext Amsterdam Stock Exchange during May 2024, is now the final remaining bidder for M Group after seeing off rival interest from Apollo Global Management and others. A deal is expected to be signed sometime this summer.

Such an agreement would also need the blessing of private equity firm PAI Partners, which since 2018 has been the majority owner of M Group (Citi are said to be advising PAI on the process). The deal, if approved, could give M Group an important boost and help them to expand, although they don’t appear to be short of orders.

According to M Group’s last investor update in November 2023, the company’s order book and bid pipeline were continuing to grow. On 30th September 2023, the order book was £6.7 billion (vs £5.4 billion last year) with a further £400m awaiting signature. This provided visibility for 94% of their FY24 budget revenues (up from 86% a year ago).