Zayo Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: ZAYO), a portfolio company of GTCR, LLC and San Francisco Partners, L.P, has acquired Optic Zoo Networks for CDN $31 million.
The transaction closed on January 18, 2018. Bank Street Group served as exclusive financial advisor to Optic Zoo in connection with the transaction.
GTCR and San Francisco Partners own 15.1% and 5.1% of Zayo respectively.
Vancouver based Optic Zoo owns and operates high-capacity fiber in Vancouver and has achieved a significant penetration of customers, with a focus on the digital media sector.
The transaction strengthens Zayo’s position in Vancouver and Western Canada, adding 103 route miles and more than 100 on-net buildings to Zayo’s Vancouver footprint. The acquisition will deepen Zayo’s customer base, providing the ability to cross sell to a diverse group of U.S. and Canadian customers. Optic Zoo’s high-count fiber, 270 on average, has ample capacity for new and existing customers.
The third largest city in Canada, Vancouver is a global gateway and Canadian business hub. The city is a growing center for digital media and film, professional services, biotechnology and software development, all large consumers of bandwidth.
“The addition of Optic Zoo, with its pure play assets and innovative team, will complement our Canadian footprint and accelerate our traction in a rapidly growing media and technology hub,” said Jack Waters, CTO and president of Fiber Solutions at Zayo. “Optic Zoo has built a strong and growing business, attracted an impressive customer base and delivered revenue growth rates of more than 20 percent.”
All of Optic Zoo’s revenue aligns with Zayo’s infrastructure-focused business segments, with the majority classified as fiber solutions. Optic Zoo is expected to generate CDN $1.9M in annualized EBITDA for the quarter ended March 31, 2018. Zayo expects to achieve approximately CDN $0.5M in annualized cost synergies by year-end 2018 after a relatively straightforward integration process.
Boulder, Colorado based Zayo Group Holdings provides communications infrastructure services, including fiber and bandwidth connectivity, colocation and cloud infrastructure to the world’s leading businesses. Customers include wireless and wireline carriers, media and content companies and finance, healthcare and other large enterprises. Zayo’s 126,000-mile network in North America and Europe includes extensive metro connectivity to thousands of buildings and data centers. In addition to high-capacity dark fiber, wavelength, Ethernet and other connectivity solutions, Zayo offers colocation and cloud infrastructure in its carrier-neutral data centers.
photo credit: Cnippato78