CityFibre Infrastructure Holdings, a UK fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) overbuilder, today announced that its existing shareholder, Mubadala Investment Company, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, has committed an incremental £300m ($395m USD) of equity to CityFibre. Therefore, over the past 6 months, CityFibre has raised a total of over £1.425bn ($1.88bn USD), which includes a prior £825m equity investment from Mubadala (£500m share) and Interogo Holding, as well as a £300m increase in its debt facilities, in September 2021.
CityFibre’s incremental capital raise will support the company’s £4bn investment program which targets, by year-end 2025, having its fiber network pass 8 million UK homes across 285 cities, towns, and villages. Also, CityFibre’s plan envisions fiber deployments to 800k businesses, 400k public sector sites, and 250k 5G access points in the UK.
CityFibre – UK Fiber Build-Out
CityFibre is the largest alternative fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) provider in the UK with its network presently passing 1.5 million homes. Indeed, this represents a 50% increase in fiber passings, from November 2021, when the company indicated it had passed 1 million homes.
However, of CityFibre’s total passings, only 1.3 million (87%) of the homes, across 60 UK cities, are ready for service – whereby end users can receive broadband service. Additionally, by the end of 2022, CityFibre expects to have fiber builds ongoing in 150+ cities, towns, and villages in the UK.
Wholesale Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP)
CityFibre has wholesale agreements in-place with over 30 consumer internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK. Specifically, these agreements are with national ISPs Vodafone, TalkTalk, and Zen Internet, which have made long-term commitments of both residential and business customers. Also, CityFibre has signed contracts with ISPs including Air Broadband, Highnet, Triangle Networks, Trunk Networks, Giganet, Quickline, and purebroadband.
Ownership
CityFibre’s key shareholders are Antin Infrastructure Partners (Fund III), West Street Infrastructure Partners (Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division), Mubadala Investment Company, and Interogo Holding.
Mubadala Investment Company – Overview
Mubadala Investment Company, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, has $234bn of assets under management (AUM). Specifically, the firm deploys this capital into a broad range of sectors including aerospace, agribusiness, healthcare, information & communications technology, metals & mining, real estate & infrastructure, petroleum & petrochemicals, pharmaceutical & medical technology, renewables, semiconductors, and utilities.
Digital Infrastructure
Beyond CityFibre’s UK fiber build-out and within digital infrastructure, Mubadala Investment Company has invested in the sub-sectors of data centers and fiber. For example, the firm’s existing and past investments include:
- Cologix: retail colocation provider which operates or has under development 40 data centers located in 11 markets of the United States and Canada. Through Cologix’s equity recapitalization, Mubadala exited its shareholding in the company
- Hyperoptic: invested in the UK fiber broadband provider in 2018. Subsequently, Mubadala sold its interest in Hyperoptic to KKR in 2019
- IXcellerate: Russia’s third largest data center operator, which plans to grow its operational data center portfolio to 15k racks
- Khazna Data Centers: wholesale data center operator in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
- Princeton Digital Group (PDG): 20 data centers (operational and development) with over 600 megawatts of potential power capacity across China, Singapore, India, Indonesia, and Japan
