FirstCapital advises Smart421 on its sale to Kingston Communications PLC
Press Release, 29 September 2006
London - FirstCapital, the technology corporate finance house, announce that Kingston Communications, the provider of integrated and converged communications services, has acquired Smart421 for a cash consideration of £24.2 million, including cash and cash equivalents of approximately £4.0 million. FirstCapital acted as exclusive financial advisor to Smart421 in the transaction.
Julian Harris, Chairman of Smart421 commented: "I am delighted with the service delivered by the team at FirstCapital. They worked with us to position Smart421 as a key strategic asset in the marketplace. They leveraged their trusted and deep relationships inside target acquirers on a global basis. They were totally committed, ran the whole process with the utmost attention to detail and delivered an excellent result for the shareholders, management and the company."
Smart421 is a specialist in the area of business applications integration and increasingly delivers both integration and ongoing applications managed services to blue chip organisations. The business has developed long term partnerships with its customers and currently provides services to some of Europe's largest blue chip businesses including O2, Norwich Union, E2V and UPC.
Smart421, which will be managed as a discrete business entity, provides a complementary and strong strategic fit within Kingston and in particular, with the Affiniti communications integration business.
In the year ended 30 June 2006, Smart421 reported turnover of £11.1 million (2005: £8.9 million) and profit before tax of £1.5 million (2005: £0.3 million). As at that date, the business had gross assets of £6.6 million, including a cash and cash equivalents balance of £3.4 million. On present performance, the acquisition will be immediately earnings accretive.
Commenting on the acquisition, Malcolm Fallen, Chief Executive of Kingston Communications, said: "The acquisition of Smart421 provides an exciting opportunity for Kingston. The business has an outstanding reputation in the applications integration marketplace, offering a high quality service to its customers. The Group will benefit from the immediate extension of application-related skills, particularly through Smart421's Microsoft and IBM capabilities."
For further information, please contact:
Jason Purcell, FirstCapital on +44 (0)20 8563 1563 or jason@firstcapital.co.uk
Or visit our website www.firstcapital.co.uk
About Kingston Communications
Kingston Communications is a leading provider of communications solutions to businesses and public sector organisations throughout the UK.
The Kingston Group includes Affiniti, the communications integrator created from the coming together of Kingston Communications' Business Services division, Omnetica and Technica in 2005. Affiniti provides secure voice, data, video, mobile, wireless and storage solutions that enable businesses to exploit the opportunities that come with converged communications.
Kingston's national capabilities have been built on its strong foundations within East Yorkshire, where the company has been providing leading edge services to residential and business customers for over 100 years and where it has been a pioneer in the use of ADSL technology.
The Kingston Group also includes Eclipse Internet, an established and growing broadband ISP that delivers internet connectivity and services to businesses and consumers throughout the UK.
For further details on Kingston Communications, please visit www.kcom.com
About Smart421
Smart421 is a managed services and integration specialist, providing outsourced IT services for mid-market and enterprise organisations in both the public and private sectors. Smart421 focuses on three key solution areas: Managed Services, Integration and Innovation, delivered using a unique onshore/offshore service structure. This allows Smart421 to combine onshore project management and expertise with offshore development and technical services, to deliver a rare combination of innovation, excellent customer service and demonstrable cost savings.
Smart421 maintains good relationships with its technology partners to sustain its specialist technology skills and deliver expertise and scale. Smart421 has close associations with Indian based organisation Tech Mahindra and is an IBM Premier and Tier One WebSphere Services partner and a Microsoft Gold and Oracle Partner.
Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Ipswich, UK, Smart421 has over 130 employees. Smart421 values the long term relationships built with some of Europe's largest organisations and its customer base includes Norwich Union, UPC Broadband, O2 and E.ON.
For further details on Smart421, please visit www.smart421.com
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