IT firm in £1.75m acquisition of local rival

MANCHESTER-based IT solutions specialist K3 Business Technology Group has swallowed Willow Starcom, a subsidiary of Access Intelligence, in a £1.75m deal.

Funding for the acquisition – agreed on a debt free/cash free basis – has come from K3’s existing banking resources.

Established in 1990 and based in Wigan, Willow Starcom provides  remotely managed, on-premise and cloud-hosted IT support solutions together with related hardware, software support and consultancy.
 
It has particular expertise in Microsoft products and is a Microsoft hosting partner.  Other key areas of expertise are data backup solutions, data storage solutions, remote access solutions and virtualisation.
 
Willow Starcom operates in two data centres in the Manchester area and has a customer base of approximately 240 customers cross a variety of sectors.  

For the financial year ended November 30 2014, the company generated revenue of £2.66m,   EBITDA of £370,000 and profit before tax of £100,000.  Net assets at 30 November 2014 stood at £900,000.

K3 is a supplier of IT solutions to the retail, manufacturing and distributions sectors.

Its chief executive David Bolton said: “Willow Starcom is a well-established business which generates a high proportion of recurring revenues.
 
“It is highly complementary to K3’s existing hosting and managed services activities and the business can be very readily integrated.  The addition of Willow Starcom will broaden our existing offering within hosting and managed services and brings additional expertise and skills to our team.

“We believe that there is significant potential to expand our hosting and managed services activities and this acquisition is part of our strategy to realise that growth opportunity.”