Irish IT services giant Version 1 has sealed another takeover deal
The company is buying London-based Cedar Consulting – its sixth acquisition in the UK.
DUBLIN-BASED IT services giant Version 1 has shrugged off Brexit uncertainty to seal its sixth UK acquisition in the past five years.
The Irish company, founded in 1996, announced today that it had taken over London firm Cedar Consulting for an undisclosed sum.
The move will take Version 1′s total headcount to more than 1,100 staff, including 400 in the UK – where it has been taking over a series of smaller firms to boost its footprint. The company said it had a “pipeline of UK acquisitions planned for 2018 and beyond”.
Last year, the company got a €90 million funding injection from London private equity outfit Volpi Capital in a deal that involved the investor taking a majority stake in the Irish firm, which was valued at nearly €200 million at the time.
Version 1′s core business is selling software licenses and IT services to other businesses in partnership with the likes of Oracle and other global tech companies.
Its CEO, Tom O’Connor, said the company saw Brexit as a “unique challenge which must be overcome in order to grow our business and continue to expand in the UK market”, adding that current operating conditions there were “challenging”.
Version 1′s most recent takeover before the latest deal was its 2016 acquisition of Warwickshire-based Beoley Mill Software.
€1 billion revenue
The company’s co-founder and former CEO, Justin Keatinge, who stepped down from the role last year, previously told Fora that the firm had a list of acquisition targets and it planned to complete around one takeover a year as it continued expanding.
He said the company was aiming for turnover of €1 billion within the next 10 years. It is expecting sales to hit around €120 million this year, up from approximately €100 million in 2017.
Version 1 last year unveiled plans to hire more than 300 extra staff for its Dublin base, while it also has offices in Cork, Belfast and several locations across England and Scotland.
