iomart Group acquires Backup Technology

GLASGOW, UK: iomart Group plc, the Glasgow-headquartered cloud company, has today announced the acquisition of Backup Technology (‘BTL'), a leading provider of cloud backup and disaster recovery services for some of the UK's best known brands, for £23 million (US$37million).

The total consideration paid for BTL is £23m, satisfied through an initial consideration of £17.5m in cash and £3.5m from the issue of 1,205,857 new ordinary shares. A further deferred consideration of £2.0m is payable in cash on 31 January 2014.

Based in Leeds, BTL boasts an impressive customer portfolio of 200 enterprise clients including Siemens, British Red Cross, Lloyds Register, Suzuki and Pernod Ricard as well as Liverpool and Everton football clubs. Established in 2005, BTL protects many Petabytes of data for global organisations.

Angus MacSween, CEO of iomart Group plc, said: "We are delighted to welcome BTL to the Group as they have achieved ground breaking progress in the delivery of cloud backup and disaster recovery and have been on our radar for some time. BTL gives iomart a solid and well-established platform to grow further from, with a very good enterprise customer base and little crossover from the existing Group base. It's a very good strategic fit, complementing our portfolio of existing products."

The cash consideration for BTL has been financed by a £35m debt package from Bank of Scotland made up of a £15m Term Loan and £20m Revolving Credit Facility.

Richard McKay, Relationship Director Bank of Scotland Commercial Glasgow said: "We are delighted to continue our support of iomart's growth, further enhancing its market leading position in cloud computing services. iomart is one of Scotland's fastest growing businesses and these facilities will not only finance this purchase but also provide capacity to enable iomart to deliver further strategic acquisitions going forward."

Ritchie Fiddes, co-founder of BTL who continues as Sales & Service Director, added: "As the growth of cloud services continues to gain momentum, iomart Group provides a perfect fit for BTL to be able to offer its customers additional complimentary services. Being able to plug directly into iomart's expertise and its enterprise level data centres and fibre network means we can work with even bigger customers who require the big infrastructure and strong balance sheet that iomart can provide."