Posted: 08th Dec, 2009 By: MarkJ
Daisy, a Lancashire-based telecoms and broadband ISP, has posted its latest Q3 2009 results, which highlighted a loss of £2.1m for the first 9 months of this year and plans to cut staff from 1150 in August 2009 to 850 by March 2010. Interestingly Daisy does not foresee its current problems as being an obstacle to future acquisitions of rival providers.
Matthew Riley, CEO of Daisy, commented:
"The strategy of consolidating the currently fragmented UK SME and mid-market telecoms sector remains the right one for Daisy. Whilst the integration of the acquired businesses remains our immediate focus, we are continuing to assess further opportunities to grow market share through acquisition. With the integrations going to plan, the systems and processes now in place provide a solid foundation for the future acquisitive growth."
Daisy Group has certainly gobbled up a lot of ISPs and telecoms operators so far, including FREEDOM4 on 21st July (the original starting origin), Daisy Communications, Vialtus, Redstone plc's telecommunications division plus the trade and assets of each of Eurotel and AT Communications.
However, as a consequence of the refocus, Daisy's board does not consider that FREEDOM4 / FREEDOM4 WiFi form part of the ongoing Group strategy. The Board has decided to divest from its wireless businesses and is considering its options in relation to these. FREEDOM4 currently owns the largest UK WiMAX broadband wireless spectrum licence consisting of two blocks of 84MHz in the frequency band 3.6 - 4.2GHz.