Zayo Lands in France, Buys Neo

April 28th, 2014 by · 3 Comments

It’s official, Zayo’s latest acquisition is across the Atlantic in France.  This morning the Boulder-based network operator announced an agreement to purchase Neo Telecoms, an independent metro fiber and data center operator in France.

neotelecomsmapSince its purchase of AboveNet, additional purchases by Zayo that would give it assets in continental Europe have seemed inevitable.  AboveNet itself had expanded its intercity network across the English Channel with a loop hitting Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Paris.

Neo Telecoms’ main fiber asset is of course a deep, high-fiber-count metro network in Paris, roughly 350 route miles connecting 500 buildings.  Thus, Zayo’s move gives them both assets and local talent, which is something any outside metro fiber operator needs for each European market it enters.  Two of Neo’s original founders, Didier Soucheyre and Florian du Boys, will be staying on to lead Zayo France.

Neo also operates a set of data centers around the country totaling 36,000 square feet which will no doubt be folded into the zColo corner in some form.

Financial terms were not disclosed.  For a general idea of the size of the purchase though, Neo did about €26.8M in revenue in 2012 with about €5.2M in EBITDA.  Last year they did about €30M in revenue, and while I don’t have an EBITDA number the margins were probably not that different.  I wonder what multiple they got.

If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!

Categories: Datacenter · Mergers and Acquisitions · Metro fiber

Join the Discussion!

3 Comments So Far


Leave a Comment

You may Log In to post a comment, or fill in the form to post anonymously.





  • Ramblings’ Jobs

    Post a Job - Just $99/30days
  • Event Calendar