Geoff Neate (Spirit)
Spirit Telecom has added yet another acquisition to its belt with the purchase of managed services provider Phoenix Austec for $1.6 million.
The acquisition will give the publicly-listed telecommunications provider a foothold in the MSP sector for small-to-medium enterprises.
Founded in Melbourne in 2007, Phoenix Austec last year generated revenue of $1.9 million and counts on more than 100 customers, according to an ASX announcement.
Its services include hosted firewall, IT security and consulting and cloud-based support services particularly in the real estate sector as well as among SMEs.
It currently has partnerships with HP, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft and WatchGuard according to its website.
Effective from 1 July, the acquisition is being funded via Spirits’ cash reserves and scrip, escrowed for 12 months.
Phoenix Austec has previously been approached with acquisition offers, according to the MSP’s MD Amelia Buchanan.
“Once we understood the direction Spirit is headed and the growth opportunity that this delivers the Phoenix team, we became eager to be part of the journey,” she said.
“We were particularly impressed with the integration methodology that Spirit has created for MSP’s inside its operations. We have met a lot of the Spirit team and we are already working on realising the potential that the newly formed Spirit IT will deliver.”
After fending off an acquisition offer from Adelaide-based broadband specialist Uniti Wireless in April, Spirit went on to make four of its own acquisitions in as many months, including Phoenix.
The first of these was fellow carrier LinkOne for $5.7M in April. This was followed by another carrier Building Connect one month later, for which it paid $300,000.
Earlier this month, Spirit made its first major foray into managed services this year with the $2.6-million purchase of Arinda IT.
Spirit is now focused on growing its MSP division and is currently integrating Phoenix and Arinda into the company, the telco’s MD Geoff Neate said.
“We approached Phoenix a few months ago and were impressed by its strong competence in providing managed IT and SAAS solutions to a customer base that is typical of Spirit’s target market. We now have a strong growing MSP IT product and customer portfolio,” he added.
