YFM investment in Resulting IT
Sale of Teledata to Datum
Blacksquare Advisory has an insightful understanding of commercial drivers coupled with in-depth market intelligence and reach. From the outset and through to completion, our experience with them was exceptional. At each stage, their advice was coherent, consistent, and honest, which gave us confidence in the negotiation of the headline price and the sale process. Omaier and Jason’s drive was invaluable in keeping momentum and energy levels up, they took on an enormous amount of the stress from us and without which we could not have had the successful outcome that was achieved. As people you could not find a more balanced and capable team.
Steven Strauss
on behalf of the shareholders of Teledata
Blacksquare Advisory advised the shareholders of Teledata UK, a leading regional data centre specialising in premium colocation and cloud hosting services, on the sale of the business to UBS Asset Management backed, Datum Group.
Value: Not disclosed
Location: Manchester
Acquirer: Datum Group (backed by UBS Asset Management)
Based in Manchester, Teledata offers market-leading solutions to a broad range of customers with high levels of operational reliability, edge technology services offering low-latency connectivity, a strong focus on environmental sustainability, and a facility with multi-level security measures in place, which led to consistent year-on-year customer growth and high levels of customer retention
Recent new wins of blue-chip, global hyperscaler customers on multi-year contracts, and the addition of a fully powered adjacent site secured for immediate development, meant that Teledata was ideally positioned to realise significant future growth with demand continuing to outstrip supply in the North West
Operating in a market experiencing ongoing consolidation, and with the North West region being a key strategic focus for larger data centre operators, it was expected that Teledata would attract strong interest once marketed for sale
Following a competitive pitch process, Blacksquare Advisory was appointed as sole financial adviser.
Whilst the original intention was to explore a sale process in 2023 once the second site was fully operational, given the positive market tailwinds, it was agreed that a ‘soft’ market-testing exercise would be explored in Q1 2022, targeting a narrow group of strategically motivated trade buyers
Blacksquare Advisory prepared a suite of information including a detailed data pack with operational and financial KPIs to support this process, providing interested parties with sufficient information on which to properly appraise both the existing operational business and the growth potential of the new site with an additional 6MW of capacity available
Several offers and proposals to acquire the business were received, and through multiple rounds of negotiation with the interested parties, and by leveraging the competitive tension, Blacksquare Advisory helped to secure a premium value for the business, significantly exceeding both the original proposals and vendor expectations
Teledata is a strategic acquisition for Datum, representing its first bolt-on regional acquisition and provides a northern footprint to complement its existing Farnborough site whilst enabling cross-selling opportunities to the enlarged group. The new owners intend to capitalise on the existing reputation of Teledata and the strong demand for its high quality services to support both their existing client base and secure new long term clients as they develop the second site into a bespoke, Datum configured data centre providing significant new capacity to an underserved market.