American firm, Equinix, has marked its strategic expansion into the African market, by sealing a deal to acquire West African data centre and connectivity solutions provider, MainOne, for an enterprise value of $320 million.
Equinix, a digital infrastructure company, which on Tuesday, completed the acquisition, augments Equinix’s long-term strategy to become a leading African carrier-neutral digital infrastructure company by being able to bring a full range of transformative technologies and connectivity to Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.
According to a document made available to The Guardian, yesterday, this acquisition will extend Platform Equinix into West Africa, giving organisations based in and outside Africa access to global and regional markets. Nigeria has both the largest population as well as economy, with approximately 142 million active Internet subscribers.
Home to new innovative digital ecosystems in fintech and digital media, it has a great opportunity for the expansion of digital services.
Equinix believes MainOne, headquartered in Lagos, to be one of the most exciting technology businesses to emerge from Africa, and that Lagos is rapidly becoming a key connectivity hub for the wider West Africa region.
Founded by Funke Opeke in 2010, the company has enabled connectivity for the business community of Nigeria and now has digital infrastructure assets, including three operational data centres, with an additional facility in Lagos expected to open in April 2022.
MainOne’s assets, part of which the acquisition covers include four operational data centres, which will add more than 64,000 gross square feet of space to Platform Equinix, in addition to 570,000 square feet of land for future expansions; an extensive submarine network extending 7,000 kilometers from Portugal to Lagos, Accra and along the West African coast with landing stations in Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
Others are a terrestrial network of more than 1,200 kilometres of reliable terrestrial fibre in Lagos, Edo and Ogun states; connectivity to terrestrial sites extends across 65 points of presence (PoPs) in cities across Portugal, Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire; access to key Internet exchanges enabling low latency to key global networks, including Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook; an estimated over 800 business-to-business customers, including major international technology enterprises, social media companies, global telecommunications operators, financial service companies and cloud service providers. The firm boasts of nearly 500 employees and a management team with a deep understanding of local and international markets.
The document informed that the facilities currently generate approximately $60 million annualised (Q2’21LQA) revenue with a purchase multiple of approximately 14x EBITDA.
Under the new arrangement, MainOne will operate under a new brand “MainOne, an Equinix company”, while Opeke will continue to lead under the new brand of “MainOne, an Equinix company.”
Globally, Platform Equinix is comprised of 240 data centers across 66 metros and 27 countries on six continents, providing data center and interconnection services to over 10,000 companies including more than 50 per cent of Fortune 500 companies.
The closure of the MainOne acquisition marks the latest in a series of strategic acquisitions for the world’s digital infrastructure company. Following the announcement of intent to acquire MainOne in December 2021, Equinix recently announced expansions in South America with its intended acquisition of three Entel data centers to accelerate digital transformation opportunities for local businesses and multinational companies. Both acquisitions followed the announcement to acquire 13 Bell data centers in Canada and two highly interconnected data centres in Mumbai through the acquisition of GPX India in October 2020 and September 2021, respectively.
