UKFast mulls £350m IPO

Hosting provider engages GCA Altium to review strategic options

UKFast is weighing up the possibility of an IPO it expects to be worth upwards of £350m.

The Manchester-based hosting firm has engaged a team from investment bank GCA Altium to review strategic options, including a potential float.

Founded in 1999, UKFast claims to provide dedicated servers, cloud services and colocation to more than 5,000 government, public sector and commercial organisations. Last year it turned over £47m and has an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 45 per cent.

UKFast CEO Lawrence Jones said: "We've given away shares in the company to loyal teammates who work incredibly hard, but we've never seriously considered selling shares before now. Timing is critical and a great deal depends on market conditions, so that's why we've appointed GCA Altium."

Jones acknowledged in an interview with CRN last week that it "would be naïve to think that we could beat everybody on every front" as UKFast launched ClearCloud, an AWS and Azure consultancy arm.

However, Jones claimed in this latest announcement that there is firmly a place for British providers in the multicloud world.

"The British hosting market is incredibly exciting and, whilst there's a lot of talk around AWS and Azure, the industry's adoption of multicloud strategies means there's a huge opportunity for British cloud providers to give the US organisations a run for their money," he said.

"We've seen from the deals we're winning in the public sector and at government level that there's an appetite from British organisations to deal with other British organisations. By continuing to invest in our technology and our product set, I see UKFast as being the definitive British alternative."