Cloud provider Iomart buys BTL backup for £23m
Seven-year-old Leeds DR firm swallowed by growth from Glasgow
Scotland's Iomart Group has acquired Leeds-based cloud backup and disaster recovery services provider Backup Technology (BTL) for £23m, according to an AIM announcement.
Angus MacSween, chief executive of Iomart Group, said BTL had performed impressively and broken ground in the delivery of cloud-based storage.
"They have been on our radar for some time. BTL gives Iomart a solid and well-established platform to grow further, with a very good enterprise customer base and little crossover with the existing group base," MacSween said. "BTL protects many petabytes of data for global organisations."
BTL was founded in 2005 and turns over about £5.2m a year. It has 16 staff and 200 enterprise customers, including Siemens, British Red Cross, Everton FC, Liverpool FC, Lloyds Register, Suzuki and Pernod Ricard.
The deal is for £17.5m in cash and £3.5m in new shares, with another £2m payable in cash on 31 January 2014, financed in part by a £35m debt package from the Bank of Scotland, incorporating a £15m term loan and £20m in revolving credit.
Simon Chappell, founder and proprietor of BTL, is leaving the company. "We very much admire what MacSween and his team have done in establishing iomart as the leading player in the market for cloud services in the UK and can see that our backup expertise and services are a great fit," he said in a statement provided by Iomart.
BTL had turnover of £5.2m for the year to the end of December 2012. It employs 16 people.
Ritchie Fiddes, co-founder of BTL, said he would continue post-acquisition as sales and service director.
"Being able to plug directly into Iomart's expertise and its enterprise-level datacentres and fibre network means we can work with even bigger customers that require the big infrastructure and strong balance sheet that iomart can provide," Fiddes said.
About a month ago, Iomart bought Redstation, a Hampshire managed services provider.
Iomart's MacSween said its current hosting business is still growing strongly, and the two acquisitions this year would only add to the expansion.