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Network operator CityFibre has this morning announced their second recent acquisition of an alternative UK broadband provider, which will see them gobble Connexin’s growing 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network in parts of East Yorkshire (Hull etc.), Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire (England). The financial details of the deal are not yet known.
Just to recap. Connexin, which is backed by an investment of £80m from PATRIZIA, has spent the past few years aiming to deploy a new full fibre (FTTP) network across 500,000 premises in East Yorkshire and beyond. Most of this has occurred around the Hull and East Yorkshire area, where they’ve been taking on local incumbent KCOM and even managing to use some of their existing cable ducts and poles to run new fibre (here).
In addition, Connexin has holds the £58.6m (state aid funded) Project Gigabit contract for rural parts of Nottinghamshire and West Lincolnshire (Lot 10), which aims to expand their full fibre (FTTP) network to cover 34,320 hard to reach premises in those regions (here and here). The operator thus has very little overbuild with CityFibre’s existing network.
Meanwhile, CityFibre currently still aspires to cover up to 8 million UK premises with their new full fibre network – representing c.30% of the UK (they’ve already done 4.4 million or 4.2m as ready for service). But their original target of hitting that by around 2025 will not be achieved, and the operator has instead made no secret of their desire to boost their growth via mergers and acquisition (M&A) of smaller alternative networks (example).
So far CityFibre’s M&A strategy has already resulted in the acquisition of LitFibre (here) and, after a year of waiting, we now have their next big deal in the shape of a move to acquire Connexin’s full fibre infrastructure. The acquisition includes Connexin’s built network assets which currently pass more than 80,000 premises, as well as work in progress to a further 20,000 premises and options to extend further throughout Hull over time.
The deal will also see CityFibre take on Connexin’s Project Gigabit contract, which will become their tenth such contract secured and should also help to unlock an additional expansion to over 50,000 non-subsidised premises in the target regions. Overall, CityFibre expects the deal will enable an expansion of their footprint by “up to” 185,000 premises. PATRIZIA’s European Infrastructure Fund II will also become a minority shareholder in CityFibre.
Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:
“Connexin has built an outstanding network and it’s a brilliant fit for CityFibre. Our mature wholesale model will now bring Hull’s homes and businesses increased choice and access to unrivalled connectivity products, services and prices. After our rapid integration of Lit Fibre’s network, we have demonstrated that this is an effective way to expand our footprint and we look forward to playing an active role in the sector’s accelerating consolidation in 2025.
Given our major role in the government’s Project Gigabit rollout, we are also pleased to take on a further contract, delivering next-generation digital infrastructure for more hard-to-reach rural communities across Nottingham and West Lincolnshire.”
Furqan Alamgir, CEO of Connexin, said:
“We’re thrilled to partner with CityFibre as we focus on our national growth strategy. This partnership will bring the best of our combined expertise to consumers and businesses alike across the UK.
The next phase of our growth is tremendously exciting as we accelerate our focus on expanding our Smarter Home, Business, Enterprise, Public Sector and Utilities products and services across the UK, enabling these rapidly evolving markets to achieve ambitious goals through adopting smarter technology.”
Phoebe Smith, MD of PATRIZIA Infrastructure, said:
“This agreement is a great step forward for infrastructure competition in Hull. We’re delighted to be joining as CityFibre shareholders and to support its continued expansion and success as the UK’s leading full fibre wholesale platform.
We’re very proud of everything Connexin has achieved, and we look forward to continuing to support its growth as a leading provider of LoRaWAN® and IoT infrastructure.”
CityFibre said they would “immediately begin integrating” Connexin’s XGS-PON network to bring CityFibre’s wholesale products, pricing and services across the footprint. CityFibre expects to complete the integration “later this year“, which is work that usually does tend to take up to around a year to complete (highly variable).
The move also gives CityFibre access Connexin’s wireless long range Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN / LoRaWAN), which has already won contracts to support over 2 million smart water meters. This is not an area of the market that CityFibre has had to deal with much before, but they expressed a desire to “build on its success in Internet of Things (IoT)” services.
Finally, CityFibre is a wholesale-only network and might thus face the same issue (conflict) as they had with LitFibre, which concerns how they handle Connexin’s existing base of retail customers. In the case of LitFibre, the former co-founders of that company agreed to acquire the retail base and act as an independent ISP on the network (here), which may also be the case here as there’s no mention of the retail base in today’s announcement (we’re checking).
In the grander scheme of things, today’s agreement isn’t huge for an operator of CityFibre’s size, but they expect to do many more such deals in the near future. One recent report indicated that CityFibre already has “up to” 850,000 homes served by other alternative networks “under M&A exclusivity“ (here) and today’s announcement covers a chunk of that. At the same time, they’re also trying to raise fresh funding to support these efforts.
Cameron Barney Herbst Hilgenfeldt acted as financial advisor for Connexin. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe acted as legal advisor to Connexin. PwC supported CityFibre with financial and Tax due diligence. Bristows LLP acted as legal advisor to CityFibre. Cartesian acted as integration advisor to CityFibre.
UPDATE 5:12pm
In terms of the retail base. Connexin has confirmed they plan to continue as an ISP and aim to expand its services over the CityFibre network, and as such will be holding onto its retail broadband service.
UPDATE 5:21pm
Connexin has just added that they will also continue to expand their IoT business with utility and other business and public sector customers across the UK.