Sterlite Technologies Ltd said it has acquired UK-based Impact Data Solutions Group at an enterprise value of around 12 million British pounds (Rs 105 cr).
Enterprise value includes non-cash costs assumed by the company, including the takeover of any debt that the target company has. The exact cash payout was not revealed, nor was the value assigned to the equity portion of the transaction.
Sterlite will acquire the company, which specializes in providing data center solutions, in two tranches, with the first tranche — comprising 80% of the equity base — already completed and the second tranche to be acquired in coming years.
The payout for the remaining 20% will depend on the unit’s financial performance.
The acquired group — comprising Impact Data Solutions Ltd and its affiliates — had a turnover of around 8 million pounds (Rs 72 cr) in 2018.
Sterlite Technologies, which offers fiber optic cables and related services and solutions, said Impact Data Solutions is a provider of “network infrastructure solutions to hyper-scale data centers and colocation providers”.
Colocation providers are those who set up well-connected buildings with high-level of security and power backup so that other companies can place their computers and servers there.
UK is one of the biggest centers for companies looking to set up new data centers, or large buildilngs full of computers that do most of the processing work behind websites and mobile applications. Data centers are also used by enterprises to carry out processing intensive work, such as big-data analytics, as well as to store or back-up their data.
Data centers form the ‘brain’ of cloud computing services, and are seeing increasing demand due to the increasing popularity of mobile and enterprise applications.
Sterlite Technologies has, in recent years, been trying to diversify into network services, instead of being just a hardware provider or a systems integrator.
The company recently unveiled a sophisticated end-to-end solution for fiber broadband providers, based on open source technologies.
However, Sterlite Technologies has largely focused on ‘outside the building’ solutions, such as cables, switches and wide area network services. This acquisition, it said, gives it an ability to offer inside-the-building solutions, while also selling its outside-the-building solutions to clients of Impact Data Solutions.
“The acquisition provides opportunities for cross leveraging customers, expanding geographically, and adds ‘inside’ data center solutions to STL’s offerings portfolio,” the Pune-based company said.