Voxpro's two founders shared in a €40m cash windfall from the Cork firm's sale
Dan and Linda Kiely started the outsourcing company in an office above a pub.
THE HUSBAND-AND-WIFE team who founded outsourcing giant Voxpro in an office above a Cork pub shared in a cash windfall of around €40 million from the firm’s takeover earlier this year.
Toronto-based Telus International acquired a majority stake in the Irish company in August from co-founders Dan and Linda Kiely, who largely bootstrapped the business since its foundation two decades ago.
The publicly listed buyer today revealed it paid CA$58 million (nearly €40 million at today’s rates) in cash for a 55% share of the company as part of the deal, the financial details for which weren’t disclosed at the time of its announcement.
Telus also said it had an option to buy the remaining part of the company after 2021 for a total sale price of around CA$152 million (€103 million).
The Kielys held the vast majority of the firm’s shares, with only state agency Enterprise Ireland owning a small, minority stake.
Voxpro chief executive Dan Kiely previously described the agreement as “an extremely special day” for the company and its staff. He joined Telus’s senior management team as part of the takeover, while Linda Kiely remains a Voxpro director.
Rapid expansion
Voxpro, which has around 2,700 people on its payroll in Ireland, the US and Romania, provides multilingual call centres and tech support for businesses such as Google, Airbnb and Stripe, among others.
The firm has been rapidly growing in recent years, with its latest accounts showing that sales nearly doubled in the year before it was bought by the larger Canadian outfit. Revenue topped €60 million in 2016, while profit reached just over €1.3 million.
The company has said it expects ” a significant ramp up in employee numbers” in the near future. It currently has around 2,000 staff on its books in Ireland.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the sale was priced in US dollars.
