Megaport to go public

Serial technology entrepreneur Bevan Slattery is preparing to take his fifth business public with the planned listing of network virtualisation company Megaport. 

Bevan Slattery

The company today confirmed it had lodged a prospectus with ASIC to raise $25 million and list on the Australian Stock Exchange.

It wants to sell 20 million shares at $1.25 a piece, and plans to list on December 17 with an $87.5 million market capitalisation.

Megaport launched in 2013 with Slattery as its executive chairman. It boasts operations in 34 data centres across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong, and 200 active customers.

It is planning a $10 million aggressive expansion into the United States over the next year, and also wants to expand its presence in Europe in 2016. It is expecting to have a presence in 45 data centres across both regions by the end of its growth drive.

Megaport’s network interconnection model allows customers to lease network connectivity between data centres on a pay-per-use basis.

The planned listing of Megaport comes just seven months after another Slattery business, Superloop, listed on the ASX.

Superloop, which leases dark fibre between data centres in Australia and Singapore, was originally part of Megaport, but was separated out once Megaport’s elastic interconnections business model was proven in the marketplace.

Megaport's IPO is the fifth for Slattery, who alongside Superloop has overseen the public listings of data centre company NextDC, Pipe Networks (now a subsidiary of TPG), and the Asia Pacific Data Centre Group.