Private equity company Warburg Pincus has acquired a majority stake in German fibre-optic network operator Inexio; the deal has now been finalised.
In collaboration with co-shareholder and financial investor Deutsche Beteiligungs AG (DBAG) which participated in the capital increase, the company’s management and Warburg Pincus want to further accelerate the speed of the broadband deployment in the next months.
Inexio is active in 11 German federal states and has built up a fibre-optic network of more than 5,500km in less than 10 years. The company serves over 75,000 customers – mainly in areas in which high-speed internet has previously not been available.
David Zimmer, founder and CEO of Inexio, expects the strong growth to continue in the next years following the company’s yearly revenue increase of more than 30%. “In future, we will also require bandwidths in the gigabit range in the consumer market”, said Zimmer, stressing that these speeds are only possible through FTTH/FTTB connections.
The former CEO of Deutsche Telekom, René Obermann, managing director of Warburg Pincus since February 2015, will be elected chairman of Inexio’s supervisory board in the next few days. Obermann supports the growth course the company wants to achieve both through its own network deployment and acquisitions. Discussions with possible takeover targets are already in place, according to Inexio.
