The UK’s largest listed co-lo player, Telecity, has delivered another strong performance thanks to growing demand for data centre capacity from internet content, connectivity, cloud, systems integrators and financial companies in equal measure. Revenue in the first half was up 19.8% to £112m with EBITDA climbing 30.5% to almost £50m, a margin of 44.1%. The performance was strong across the board – UK & Ireland revenue grew 19.6% to £58.3m, while the Rest of Europe increased 20% to £53.9m.
It’s therefore little surprise that, as we predicted back in May (see A great start to the year for Telecity), Telecity has taken the opportunity to acquire capacity in a growth market with the £87.6m purchase of Ireland’s Data Electronics Group. The acquisition (and other planned upgrades) will almost double Telecity’s total available customer power to 116MW over the next four years. The move also establishes Telecity as the market leader in Ireland, a country many international companies use as an entry point for the European market. We fully expect further acquisitions from Telecity within Europe in the months ahead, either to enter new markets or to provide growth capacity in markets where its data centres are already fully occupied.
CEO Michael Tobin is confident that 2011 will be another strong year for the group, and it’s hard to argue with him. Demand for Telecity’s services is being driven by increasingly rich internet content supported by a growing use of mobile internet devices; the decentralisation of IT services to cloud-based platforms; and the emergence of ‘private’ cloud platforms, amongst other things. And none of these trends show any sign of slowing in the years ahead.