Hyperoptic and Community Fibre Backers Reportedly Hunt for UK Buyers

A major newspaper report has claimed that private equity firms Warburg Pincus, which backs alternative full fibre broadband network CommunityFibre, and KKR, which backs Hyperoptic, are allegedly exploring sales of their respective UK fibre broadband businesses. Both operators arguably represent some of the UK market’s more financially credible alnets.

Just to give this some context. Hyperoptic so far claims to have deployed their “full fibre” FTTP/B broadband network to cover 1.9 million UK homes (mostly across blocks of flats / MDUs in cities and major towns) and is home to 400,000 customers (9th Jun 2025). The company’s most recent accounts (here) to the end of 2024 show that gross profit rose 20% to £87m, while their statutory pre-tax losses for the year stood at £144m (similar to 2023). Revenues also grew by 22% to £114m and their customer base jumped 20%, while EBITDAi increased significantly to £24m.

As for CommunityFibre, they’ve so far covered 1.4m homes (inc. 185k businesses within 200 metres of their network) and are home to 450,000 customers (May 2026) – mostly in London and the South East, at a total cost of over £1bn. But the operator recently announced a return to network build and now aim to cover over 2m premises by 2028-2029 (here).

According to the company’s most recent accounts to the end of 2025, revenues jumped 48% in the year to £113m and adjusted EBITDA surged by 530% to £50m. But crucially we haven’t yet seen figures for their latest losses (losses before tax for 2024 were £118.5m, down from £134.6m in 2023).

However, despite some clear positives, both alternative networks have – over the past few years – had to contend with pressures from the rising cost of network build, strong market competition and high interest rates. All of this previously caused a slowdown in their respective FTTP rollouts and some redundancies as they switched to focus more on commercialisation (although CommunityFibre are now returning to build).

Talk of a sale

According to a new FT report (paywall), both Warburg Pincus and KKR are now said to be hunting buyers for their respective networks and have allegedly also explored the possibility of a merger, but neither are believed to be in a rush (they’ve more flexibility than others). Admittedly it’s not the first time that both operators have been linked to such speculation and indeed it’s somewhat par for the course in today’s debt strained market, where altnets often seem to be engaged in such discussions.

The challenge is that there are only a few network operators able to consider consolidation at this scale and many of them are dealing with pressures of their own. For example, nexfibre / VMO2 are currently focused on getting their £2bn purchase of Netomnia through a competition review. But assuming that goes through, they still don’t have unlimited billions to throw around and competition rules will become harder to avoid as they get bigger.

Meanwhile, CityFibre remain focused on altnet consolidation and should be in the frame, but their inability to secure a deal for Netomnia did deal a blow to such ambitions, and they still have significant debts of their own to keep an eye on. The rest of the altnets are simply too small to be considered realistic buyers for either operator at this scale, until more of them consolidate.

James Ratzer, Analyst at New Street Research, said:

“Buyers are now very selectively focused on good fibre assets — and Community Fibre is one of those.”

TMT Finance recently reported that CommunityFibre had appointed JPMorgan to advise it on strategic options, although none of the operators or their backers have officially confirmed or commented on the FT’s latest report. But in the meantime, we suspect there’s likely to be much more consolidation activity at the smaller end of the altnet market, where the potential for deals is much greater and many operators are having to make difficult decisions as funding nears the red.

The recent move by lenders to take control of Gigaclear (here and here), while G.Network just came out of administration “debt-free” (here), help to highlight some of the alternative and very costly paths (if you’re an investor or lender) that may yet be taken by some operators if they struggle to consolidate sooner.