Inflexion Private Equity has completed a minority investment in UKFast, a UK cloud hosting provider. The investment is being made by Inflexion’s dedicated minority investment fund, Partnership Capital. The deal sees the firm valued at GBP405 million.
Founded in 1998, by Lawrence Jones MBE and Gail Jones, Manchester-based UKFast has grown to become the UK’s largest privately-owned hosting provider. UKFast offers market-leading cloud and hosting platforms for businesses and government organisations to outsource critical IT infrastructure. UKFast recently ventured into public icloud providing integration and support for AWS and Azure through a new division, ClearCloud.
UKFast is known for its world-class service and has five fully-owned, tier-3 data centres all ISO 27001 certified, PCI-compliant and secured to UK government IL4 standards. The business has a customer base of 5,500 UK SME clients and 200 mid-sized companies, which are served by UKFast’s 350 employees across its Manchester campus, London sales office and data centres.
UKFast will continue to be majority owned and led by the founder management team. The team were drawn to Inflexion’s experience in supporting technology businesses, local Manchester office and track record of successful IPOs. Inflexion is backing UKFast’s growth in an IT infrastructure services market worth around GBP2 billion and estimated to be growing at c.9% per annum. UKFast’s strong growth in this market is driven by a paradigm shift from on-premise to cloud.
Lawrence Jones, CEO and Co-Founder of UKFast, says: “It has been widely reported about our ambitions to IPO. After spending time meeting fund managers I learned that it is incredibly important to align yourself with people who’ve got experience in areas that you don’t. When Inflexion threw their hat into the ring, there was an immediate connection. The Inflexion team have got an incredible reputation when they have invested pre-IPO. That reputation, coupled with their team, is something that gives us great confidence for the future. Growing a successful business is all about people. I am so proud of my management team and everyone who works at UKFast.”
Simon Turner, Managing Partner of Inflexion, says: “UKFast has proven itself as a market leader, with its 350 strong team providing exemplary levels of customer service alongside superior technical performance. Acknowledging the industry’s increasing appetite for public cloud, UKFast’s management launched ClearCloud in 2018, thereby enhancing its offering to existing clients as well as opening the door to new ones. We look forward to working with management to support them to accelerate growth.”
This investment was made by affiliated funds advised by Inflexion Private Equity Partners LLP.
