euNetworks Prepares For Growth With Some More Cash

At the end of last week, euNetworks announced that it has refinanced and added some resources to its war chest. They’ve raised €70M in credit loan facilities from Barclays Bank PLC and RBC Capital Markets, with another €30M available should opportunity knock.

This year has already seen fiber consolidation activity start to pick up in Europe, even if you aren’t looking at those involving cable MSOs. Zayo purchased Neo and Geo, the private equity group Cinven took out GNFT’s Spanish network, Orange is has put in a bid for Jazztel, EQT added IslaLink to its portfolio last week, and Interoute has now agreed to buy Vtesse.

euNetworks has remained on the sidelines since its purchases of Lambdanet and TeraGate in the early stages of European fiber consolidation back in 2011.  But I suspect they may not stay there for long. The new funding will go in part toward refinancing their existing debt while the rest will be channeled into growth, both of the organic and inorganic variety.

There remain plenty of regional fiber assets out there that euNetworks might find attractive, of course.  Some greater scale in the Benelux region seems like it would fit well, as would something in France.

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Categories: Financials · Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber