Melbourne IT spends $15m to buy UberGlobal

Melbourne IT this morning revealed plans to purchase Canberra-based managed hosting firm UberGlobal in a $15.5 million deal.

Martin Mercer

The acquisition will see Melbourne IT take on 70,000 customers. UberGlobal provides direct domain registration, hosting, cloud applications, white label “business” services through channel partners and bespoke cloud solutions.

It lists Coles, the Australian Army, Royal Australian Airforce, and the G20 Summit as clients, and has data centres in TransACT House in Canberra and Global Switch in Sydney.

The share purchase is expected to be completed by 30 April. The final value of the deal could be even higher than the quoted $15.5 million, as the agreement includes a potential earn-out based on earnings to 30 June this year.

Melbourne IT CEO Martin Mercer said acquiring the business would "significantly expand our customer base and deliver material synergy benefits of approximately $2.5m per annum".

The company also today reported a $24.3 million increase in revenue to $124.7 million for the financial year ending 31 December 2014. Excluding revenue frrom NetRegistry, revenue before interest from continuing operations was down by 1.9 per cent to $98.9 million.

Net profit fell from $6.2 million to $0.6 million, but after normalising for impairment and the costs of acquiring NetRegistry, net profit increased to $7.9 million.