FluidOne secures refinancing agreement to triple size of business

New deal gives FluidOne what it needs to pursue its four companies a year acquisition target

FluidOne has agreed a long-term refinancing package with Pemberton Asset Management to fuel its ambitious plans to treble in size over the next five years.

Pemberton has provided facilities to support the full refinancing and is providing a committed acquisition facility. This will provide funding for future strategic add-on acquisitions and support the channel partner's plans to acquire multiple businesses a year.

FluidOne CEO Russell Horton told CRN in March the connected cloud solutions provider aims to buy four businesses a year to help achieve its goal of becoming a £300m turnover company.

In 2023 alone it made a trio of acquisitions with Computer and Network Consultants, project five and Highlander Computing.

Since it received an investment from Livingbridge in 2019, FluidOne has quadrupled in size with its buyout-focused strategy, growing to a £109m revenue business on the back of eight acquisitions.

The group's vigorous acquisition game plan has also allowed it to climb the ranks of CRN's Top VARs, earning the 59th spot after not ranking in the previous year.

"It gives me great pleasure to announce our new partnership with Pemberton. To support our ambitious plans, we ran a process to seek a refinance package that would give flexibility and facilities to support us over the long-term," said Horton.

"During this competitive process Pemberton stood out as the ideal partner given how their expert team engaged to devise a tailored package to fit our requirements and due to their track record of supporting high growth, evolving businesses.

"We have our next acquisition in process that will be the first deployment of our new facility, and a pipeline of follow-on targets that fit our connected cloud solutions strategy."

Simon Hollingsworth, partner at Livingbridge added: "The new debt facility provides the scale and flexibility we were seeking to support the next phase of growth for FluidOne in an exciting growth market.

"The strategy since investment with Russell and the team has been to build critical capability in the highest value, next generation product sets to make FluidOne the leading UK IT and cyber managed service provider.

"We now believe we have the right value-add capabilities to deliver this across both customer segments and market verticals making FluidOne a high quality and differentiated business."