Telecom Lead Asia: Australia’s M2 Telecommunications
Group has agreed to buy Primus Telecom Holdings, the Australian operations of
the U.S. Primus Telecommunications Group for A$192.4 million ($199 million) in
cash.
Australian M2 said it will launch a one-for-four rights
offer to raise A$83.1 million to partially fund the acquisition.
M2’s acquisition of Primus is a strategic and highly
complementary transaction which, in addition to adding significant scale, will
contribute next generation sales and support capability, ensuring that M2 is
well prepared for the opportunities presented by the deployment of the National
Broadband Network (NBN).
The national Primus network, including the iPrimus brand,
has about 165,000 residential and corporate customer contracts and had revenues
of A$280.2 million in 2011.
The introduction of the Primus suite of next generation
services along with the skilled and passionate team will ensure our sales teams
are armed with the latest managed/hosted service offerings to meet the needs of
current and prospective customers,” said Geoff Horth, CEO of M2.
He added that the combined entity will be the
fifth-largest telecommunications company in the nation, after Telstra,
Singapore Telecommunications’ Optus, Vodafone Hutchison Australia and IiNet.
Primus Telecom powers Australian Power & Gas
telecommunications needs
Recently, Australian Power & Gas selected Primus
Telecom to provide a voice and data network solution that will scale with the
company as it heads towards its ‘Vision 2015’ objective of servicing 700,000
net customers.
