Mid-tier private equity firm Next Capital has made a bet on Brisbane-based iseek Communications in a deal valuing the data storage and cloud services provider at $60 million including debt.
iseek is an Australian-owned, independent data storage provider focused on data storage, cloud and connectivity services.
The company operates two data centres in Brisbane and one in Sydney. It has annual revenue of about $34 million, and has been profitable for a number of years. It is hoping to triple its earnings over the next three years, underpinned by two new data centres being built.
iseek currently is building a data centre in far north Queensland, which will open in the first quarter next year, while a third data centre in Brisbane is slated to open by 2020.
The Sydney-based buyout firm has purchased a controlling stake of 51 per cent, however, it is acting in partnership with founder Jason Gomersall, who started the business 20 years ago and was previously 100 per cent owner.
It is believed the deal was struck at a multiple of around 8x earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA).
The data centre business is its biggest earner and has customers including Queensland state government or government-owned organisations, as well as Top 200 listed companies…see full article.
