UKFast valued at £405m as it hands 30 per cent stake to private equity firm

Hosting provider secures investment from Inflexion Private Equity

Manchester-based hosting provider UKFast has handed London-based investor Inflexion Private Equity a 30 per cent stake in the business.

The minority funding deal with Inflexion's Partnership Capital Fund values UKFast at £405m, based on an EBITDA of £25m.

"It has been widely reported about our ambitions to IPO. After spending time in the City meeting fund managers I learned that it is incredibly important to align yourself with people who've got experience in areas that you don't," UKFast CEO Lawrence Jones said.

"When Inflexion threw their hat into the ring, alongside several others, there was an immediate connection. The Inflexion team have got an incredible reputation when they have invested pre-IPO. That reputation, coupled with their team headed up by Carl Wormald and Irina Hemmers is something that gives us great confidence for the future."

UKFast first unveiled plans to IPO this summer, which it claimed would value it at more than £350m.

The Manchester-based hosting provider is expecting to hit £54m in revenues for its full 2018 year.

Founded in 1999 by Lawrence and Gail Jones, UKFast is now a 350-employee-strong firm catering for 5,500 SME and 200 mid-sized customers through its five tier-3 datacentres.

It recently launched an AWS and Azure consultancy arm called ClearCloud, to address growing demand for public cloud platforms. Jones, who has previously been critical of public cloud vendors, explained the rationale behind the move in an interview with CRN, claiming that "it would be naïve to think that we could beat everybody on every front".