Antin Infrastructure Partners, an infrastructure fund, today announced the acquisition of Pulsant, a UK data center operator focused on retail colocation and managed services, from Oak Hill Capital and Scottish Equity Partners. Notably, Oak Hill (~87% ownership) and Scottish Equity (~13% ownership) have owned Pulsant since July 2014.
Pulsant – Overview
Pulsant operates a network of 10 regional data centers across seven cities in the United Kingdom. Specifically, these facilities are located in the markets of Edinburgh, London, Maidenhead, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Reading, and Sheffield.
Through its 10 data centers, Pulsant offers ~18 megawatts of power capacity for 4.3k racks. Overall, these facilities comprise ~215k sqft (20.0k sqm) of total area. Pulsant’s primary services include colocation, managed cloud, managed hosting, and managed networks.
The company serves 1.0k+ UK private enterprise and public sector customers. Below is a breakdown of Pulsant’s 10 data centers, by location, which Antin Infrastructure is acquiring:
Data Center Portfolio
- Edinburgh Medway: comprises 1.6 megawatts of power capacity, across 17k sqft of total area. Overall, this facility offers 287 racks of capacity
- Edinburgh Newbridge: comprises 1.4 megawatts of power capacity, across 6.6k sqft of total area. Overall, this facility offers 212 racks of capacity
- Edinburgh South Gyle: comprises 4.0 megawatts of power capacity, across 65k sqft of total area. Overall, this facility offers 961 racks of capacity
- Maidenhead: comprises 1.8 megawatts of power capacity, across 24k sqft of total area. Overall, this facility offers 711 racks of capacity
- Milton Keynes: comprises 3.2 megawatts of power capacity, across 45k sqft of total area. Overall, this facility offers 650 racks of capacity
- Newcastle Central: comprises 0.5 megawatts of power capacity, across 6.0k sqft of total area. Overall, this facility offers 218 racks of capacity
- Newcastle East: comprises 0.3 megawatts of power capacity, across 4.1k sqft of total area. Overall, this facility offers 110 racks of capacity
- Reading: comprises 2.0 megawatts of power capacity, across 14k sqft of total area. Overall, this facility offers 470 racks of capacity
- Sheffield: comprises 0.4 megawatts of power capacity, across 7.3k sqft of total area. Overall, this facility offers 88 racks of capacity
- South London: comprises 2.5 megawatts of power capacity, across 28k sqft of total area. Overall, this facility offers 560 racks of capacity
Antin Infrastructure Partners – Pulsant Strategy
Antin Infrastructure views Pulsant as being uniquely placed, with its nationwide presence, to:
- Seize the potential for edge computing in the United Kingdom
- Meet the growing demand for hybrid IT infrastructure. Also known as hybrid cloud, these deployments leverage a combination of different environments including on-premise, private cloud, and public cloud
Management Team
Upon completion of the transaction, Pulsant’s CEO Rob Coupland and CFO Brad Petzer will work with Antin Infrastructure to invest in further developing the company’s existing footprint.
Transaction Advisors – Antin Infrastructure and Pulsant
Antin Infrastructure’s financial advisors were RBC Capital Markets and Greenhill & Co. Additionally, Antin Infrastructure’s legal advisor was Goodwin Procter. Finally, Antin Infrastructure’s legal advisor for its debt financing was Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
Pulsant’s financial advisor was Jefferies, who ran the auction process for Oak Hill and Scottish Equity. Additionally, Pulsant’s legal advisor was Ropes & Gray.
Pulsant – Prior Investors – Oak Hill and Scottish Equity
Oak Hill and Scottish Equity acquired Pulsant in July 2014 for £200m (~$340m U.S. dollars). At the time, Pulsant generated ~£13.5m of EBITDA, implying a multiple of ~15x EBITDA for the business.
Assuming that Pulsant currently generates ~£20m of EBITDA, Dgtl Infra estimates that Antin Infrastructure acquired Pulsant for £350m+ ($480m+ U.S. dollars) from Oak Hill and Scottish Equity.
For further comparable transactions, check out our comprehensive list of data center precedent M&A transactions here.
