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Publicly-listed IT and telco services provider Over the Wire is set to acquire all of the shares of cloud hosting company Digital Sense in a deal worth $27 million in total.
Headquartered in Brisbane, Digital Sense employs approximately 40 staff and provides customisable and scalable cloud offerings to enterprise and government customers.
The purchase price consists of $21.6 million in cash and $5.4 million in Over the Wire shares priced at $3.64 per share, with the cash component sourced from an institutional placement of $20 million, priced at $4 per share, and existing cash.
According to a statement lodged with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), the deal represents a valuation of five times Digital Sense’s historical FY20 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), which was $5.4 million for the 12 month period to 30 June 2020.
By acquiring the cloud hosting company, Over the Wire sees itself accelerating its growth and capability in cloud solutions and taking Digital Sense’s offering to the whole of Australia through the provider's existing national network.
It expects the deal to provide more solution capability in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), desktop-as-a-service (DaaS), storage-as-a-service (STaaS) and data-protection-as-a-service (DPaaS).
Additionally, the acquisition presents cross-sell opportunities with extensive cloud offerings to existing Over the Wire customers, as well as cross sell opportunities of Over the Wire solutions to Digital Sense customers, according to the provider.
Michael Omeros, Over the Wire managing director, said the cloud solutions industry is expected to benefit from digital transformation initiatives, with Digital Sense positioned to capitalise on the industry’s strong growth outlook.
“We are very excited to welcome such a talented and specialised team to the Over the Wire group,” he said.
The completion of the acquisition is expected to take place on 30 October, and comes over a month after Over the Wire reported a 50 per cent year-on-year decline in net profit after tax (NPAT) for the year ending June 30 due to a previous acquisition.
It also comes after it acquired J2 Global for $36 million in August.
