GTT Takes a Big Swing at Europe, Buys Interoute

So the rumors were true that Interoute was for sale, and today the news finally landed.  GTT has agreed to acquire Interoute from the Sandoz Family Foundation, Aleph Capital and Crestview Partners in a €1.9 billion deal.

Interoute’s network emerged from the dot com bust as one of the few truly pan-European fiber networks left standing.  Their network reaches into most of the continent’s key markets in a polygon from the UK to Helsinki, the Ukraine, Istanbul, Sicily, and Madrid, with leased links into Russia, Ireland, and elsewhere via subsea cables.  The company has been a consolidator in its own right as well over the years.  In addition to a focus on infrastructure, they were one of the first networks to orient everything toward the cloud, both their own and the wider ecosystem.

For GTT, the deal represents a far deeper move into infrastructure than ever before.  Buying Hibernia Networks gave them the subsea cable and some leased dark fiber, but Interoute’s footprint is much more extensive, including 72,000km of fiber, 400 PoPs, 24 metro networks, 15 data centers, and of course feet on the ground continent-wide.  Interoute did €718 million in revenue in the twelve months ending September 30, 2017 with EBITDA of $165M.  That’s a multiple of about 11.5, give or take, which seems about right.

 

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Internet Backbones · Mergers and Acquisitions