Melbourne IT adds 400 resellers in $15m Uber Global acquisition

Melbourne IT revealed this morning plans to purchase Canberra-based managed hosting firm Uber Global Group in a $15.5 million deal.

The acquisition will see Melbourne IT take on 70,000 customers as well as more than 400 resellers. Uber Global provides direct domain registration, hosting, cloud applications, white label “business” services through channel partners and bespoke cloud solutions.

The share purchase is expected to be completed by 30 April. The final value of the deal could be even higher than the quoted $15.5 million, as the agreement includes a potential earn-out based on earnings to 30 June this year.

Uber Global includes the brands Uber Enterprise and Uber Wholesale. Uber Global also comprises iLisys Web Hosting and SmartyHost, which the company acquired from MYOB in 2013.

Melbourne IT chief executive officer Martin Mercer said acquiring the business would "significantly expand our customer base and deliver material synergy benefits of approximately $2.5m pa." [Note: this sentence has been updated due to an error in the announcement provided by Melbourne IT. The original announcement stated "$3.5m".]

Meanwhile, Melbourne IT today reported a $24.3 million increase in revenue to $124.7 million for the financial year ending 31 December 2014. Excluding revenue frrom NetRegistry, revenue before interest from continuing operations was down by 1.9 per cent to $98.9 million.

Net profit after tax fell from $6.2 million to $0.6 million, but after normalising for impairment and the costs of acquiring NetRegistry net profit after tax increased to $7.9 million.

A former CRN Fast 50 entrant, Uber Global Group describes itself as a managed services and infrastructure provider. It offers hosted Exchange, Lync and Sharepoint as well as a variety of other hosting services including Azure and AWS services.

The company has three partner programs: a value-added reseller program, an enterprise partner program for integrators and vendors, and a "power reseller" program for distributors, telcos and ISPs.

Uber Global lists Coles, the Australian Army, Royal Australian Airforce, G20 Summit as clients and has data centres in TransACT House in Canberra and Global Switch in Sydney.