Mon, 20 Jan 2025 | BUSINESS SALE
London-based EXA Infrastructure is to acquire Aqua Comms – a specialist operator of transatlantic and intra-European subsea infrastructure.
EXA Infrastructure, a London based portfolio company of global infrastructure investment manager I Squared Capital, operates over 150,000km of digital infrastructure across 37 countries, including 20 cable landing stations that provide critical connectivity to subsea systems.
Aqua Comms is an Ireland-based service provider specialising in operating submarine cable systems and supplying fibre pairs, spectrum and wholesale network capacity to the global content, cloud, carrier & enterprise markets. It is the owner/operator of America Europe Connect-1 (AEC-1), America Europe Connect-2 (AEC-2), CeltixConnect-1 (CC-1) and CeltixConnect-2 (CC-2) and is part of a consortium that owns/operates the Amitié cable system (AEC-3).
Aqua Comms was previously backed by UK infrastructure fund Digital 9 Infrastructure, which is currently winding down and selling off its assets.
The Aqua Comms business has been severely impacted by numerous factors since Digital 9’s initial investment in 2021, including an inability to deliver on its intended global growth strategy and ongoing price compression across the global subsea fibre market, especially in the Atlantic.
The deal, with an equity value of $54 million (£44 million) is subject to multi-jurisdictional regulatory approvals, including competition & merger clearance, which are expected to take approximately 12 months.
“The acquisition of Aqua Comms demonstrates EXA Infrastructure’s commitment to build a modern and diverse Transatlantic platform to fully serve AI, Cloud and Content demand, now and in the future. The combination will offer our customers more routes, more capacity and increased diversity, all on a scaled platform” said Jim Fagan, chief executive of EXA Infrastructure.
Eric Sanderson, Chairman of Digital 9 Infrastructure plc, commented: "While the pricing outcome for Aqua Comms is extremely disappointing and less than might have been expected for the company, a complete and far-reaching auction process has been run over a period of nine months, to fully market test the value of this business. Given the current market conditions and business specific factors, we are confident this transaction represents the best option for shareholders in the context of the orderly wind-down."
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