Posted: 07th Mar, 2007 By: MarkJ
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) reports that the Iomart Group PLC has acquired a 51% controlling interest in the
data centre company Ezee DSL Limited (186k). There's more..:
Highlights
* iomart enters the data centre market with a conditional agreement to acquire a 51 per cent stake in Ezee DSL Limited (to be renamed Easyspace Datacentres Ltd) for £4.8 million in cash.
* KBC Peel Hunt has conditionally placed 20,000,000 Placing Shares to raise £11 million at a price of 55 pence per share
* The Directors believe that they are acquiring their 51 per cent. stake at a significant discount to the replacement cost of iomarts share of the equipment, which the Directors estimate to be £14m
* The Directors are confident that the delivery of the Easyspace Datacentres business plan will result in iomart achieving entry into a profitable and growing business at a relatively low earnings multiple.
* EGM to approve, inter alia, the Investment Agreement, to be held at the offices of iomart Group plc on 30 March 2007 at 10:00am.
Angus MacSween, Chief Executive Officer said:
"The Directors believe that the acquisition of a significant amount of high quality data centre capacity which is close to being operational would, at this point in the cycle, be highly opportunistic. Existing data centres are believed to be close to capacity and new data centres are time-consuming to build and fit out. Independent research suggests that occupancy rates for carrier neutral data centres will be close to capacity by the end of 2007 and that prices for rack space will nearly double from 2006 prices over the next three years.
We look forward to working with Dominic Marrocco (owner of Ezee DSL Limited) who has a proven track record in the data centres market and believe his skills, experience and enthusiasm will be highly beneficial to the group.
Further details of the agreement can be found
here.