Firstcom Europe expands UK footprint with Telesis buy

Cloud telco player Firstcom Europe has acquired Bolton-based comms specialist Telesis to strengthen its position in the UK.

The deal will take Firstcom's European revenues to the €35m mark and gives the Luxembourg-based outfit much more of a stake in the UK market.

There is an ambition to use acquisition as a means of increasing the turnover with the sights set on reaching the €60m mark by the end of this year.

“Telesis is the eighth acquisition for the Firstcom Europe Group in five years and we expect to close at least one major acquisition and a number of smaller acquisitions in 2019 which will bring our expected annual revenue to over €60 million. Our goal is to become the prime pan-European cloud provider with presence across most of Europe with a revenue of over €75 million by 2020," said Jean-Pierre Vandromme, Firstcom Europe’s CEO.

“The acquisition of Telesis is a significant milestone in our journey not only because of the revenues and customer base that it brings, but because of its fast growth and expertise in the North of England for delivering telecommunications services with local customer service and product delivery teams. It fits our strategy of converting customers with traditional telecommunication services to new cloud-based products," he added.

Christian Bleakley, current Telesis director, will be taking up a position as managing director of Firstcom Europe.

Telesis has been going for a decade and is no stranger to acquisition having picked up Digital Telecom Airtime last year. It has a turnover of £9m.

Bleakley said that becoming part of a pan-European operation would give the business more opportunities for growth.

"The market is moving more towards subscription-based cloud services, such as hosted PABX and SIP channels and our combined expertise will allow us to expand and enhance the overall service proposition for our customers," he said.