TalkTalk issue strategic update on sale of UK broadband and PXC businesses UPDATE
The debt-strained TalkTalk Group, which is still in the process of trying to sell both their consumer broadband ISP business and PXC (PlatformX Communications) wholesale business, has this morning issued a “Strategic Update” on the process that makes clear the effort is still live and will be concluded “imminently“. Details remain in short supply.
A number of recent reports had indicated that the Group may have given until the end of this month to resolve their future, which is partly because another big payment to network supplier Openreach (BT) will become due around then – something that might require a further injection of funding. But despite this the ISP has apparently struggled to reach agreement on the sale of both businesses (here and here).
However, in a new Strategic Update, which was provided to investors this morning, the TalkTalk Group makes clear that they are now in “advanced discussions” regarding the disposal of both businesses. The outcome of which is said to be due “imminently“.
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TalkTalk Group Strategic Update
TalkTalk Group (the Company) is in advanced discussions regarding potential disposals of its PXC and TalkTalk Consumer businesses.
The Company is now in the final stages of its sales process for the businesses and expects to conclude both transactions imminently.
The Company will update stakeholders with further news in due course.
TalkTalk were known to have been engaging with both Octopus Investments and Epiris over a possible sale of PXC, while other reports claimed that Opus Broadband – backed by Alchemy Partners – had been engaged over their consumer business. But reaching an agreement has proven difficult and concerns over the company’s future have continued to grow.
One key difficulty is that TalkTalk’s consumer business is strongly linked to PXC’s wholesale products, thus any deal for one side of the business or the other would require some agreement on how that relationship continues into the future. We aren’t going to recap everything again today, but will be watching closely to see how this concludes over the next few days or hours.
UPDATE 10:53am
Interestingly Opus Broadband, which this week allegedly tabled a low ball c.£100m bid for TalkTalk’s consumer business (previously the talk had been of a c.£250m deal), is today being quoted by several reports to have said that its: “top priority is to ensure that every customer stays connected and that all TalkTalk employees’ roles are protected.”
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The comment indicates that Opus is back in serious talks, after previously appearing to retreat, although we suspect the final figure may be a modest bit higher than £100m. But then desperate times..
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Radio 4 Today featured this and mentioned that the acquisition cost per customer would be in the region of £60 (if I heard/understood correctly–it was somewhere between 7:10 and 7:45 if someone wants to chase the item on BBC Sounds/BBC Website).
£60 times 1.6M customers would equal £96million, so might not be too far out.
surely an exiting ISP would be better off offering a £50Amazon voucher to new customers who sing up to a 24 month contract than to buy talk talk and all its baggage.
Mark – no guarantee that you’d get any customers that way, you also then have additional costs of connecting those customers (via Openreach, CityFibre), supplying routers, and who knows what else.
£60 is an absolute bargain in comparison.
“Disposal” – the act of getting rid of something, especially by throwing it away.
As an employee of TalkTalk it would be nice if we’d been given that update
When you’ve been around a little bit you’ll understand that very few (being generous) corporate’s leadership have the employee’s at tthe forefront of their concerns. Loyaly of employers to employees started dying just ahead of realy apprenticeships and defined benefit pension scheemes. Hence ‘Human resources’ which are a bit of a liability compared to capital assets. Thany lucky stars for teh Eu ‘encouraging’ the UP to implement TUPE, that even that’s beeing watered down.
Start putting up the green banner on LinkedIn
Is Talk Mobile going to be affected at all by this?
Talkmobile has nothing to do with TalkTalk
Talkmobile, the Vodafone MVNO, is a completely separate company owned by Vodafone, people just think they are related cause they both have “Talk” in the name, they would not be affected by this at all
Talk Mobile is a Vodafone brand which is not associated with TalkTalk.
Talkmobile was founded by Carphone Warehouse in 2007 and was sold to Vodafone in 2011.
As an employee of PXC it would be nice if we’d been given that update
Come on…. you must know the drill now.
I think they will ultimately go bust and enter administration, with their customers being sold off to other suppliers in a fire sale.
We recently received an email with a new account number, and I thought then that things were on the move.
Opus would not be a saving grace for anyone. They’re still somehow in business, having previously been known under names like 6G, Supanet, Time, etc.
They stuck a load of poles up but I’m yet to see or hear of anyone being connected.
Yet still they probably think they’ll be to ‘cOLLAboRAte’ their way out of the massive hole years of mismanagement created. 😉
What’s interesting is that their decision to provision only FTTP Broadband (or “WiFi” as they call it) to new customers has seemingly gone under the radar.
To quote Pepper Brooks “It’s a bold strategy. Let’s see if it pays off “