In what was pretty much a straight customer acquisition play, Canadian hosting provider PEER 1 Hosting said Thursday that it has picked up Atlanta-based VIA Net.Works USA. Although terms were not disclosed, the purchase of VIA Net.Works, which had $2m in trailing revenue, is almost certainly in the low single digits of millions of dollars. With the deal, PEER 1 has acquired just under 200 dedicated and managed hosting customers, which generate about 80% of total revenue. The remaining 20% of revenue comes through a base of shared hosting customers. PEER 1 has not yet decided what to do with these customers, but it is a good bet that they will be sold. VIA Net.Works’ customer base consists of SMBs that are basically all hosted on the Windows platform, although VIA Net.Works does support Linux.
The deal continues a relatively healthy flow of transactions in the hosted/managed services market. While overall tech M&A spending last year dropped by half, both the number and value of deals in the hosted/managed services sector actually ticked up in 2009. We saw some 83 deals worth $2.1bn in 2009, up from 77 deals worth $1.6bn in 2008. The pace picked up throughout the year, with two-thirds of the transactions announced in the second half of 2009. We recently published a summary of a Tier1 Research report on M&A activity in the sector. To purchase a copy of that report, click here.
M&A activity in the hosted/managed services market
|
Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase