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7 April 2020

InfraVia agrees to sell its participation in NGD to Vantage Data Centers

InfraVia today announces an agreement to sell to Vantage Data Centers its interests in Next Generation Data (NGD), Europe’s largest data center campus including an existing 72MW facility and 108MW of expansion capacity, located in South Wales.

Paris, April 7th 2020. InfraVia, alongside NGD founders Simon Taylor and Nick Razey and all minority shareholders announce an agreement to sell 100% of NGD to Vantage Data Centers, a leading global provider of hyperscale data center campuses. This transaction is part of a move by Vantage to expand its footprint to Europe which started in February 2020 with the acquisition of Etix Everywhere.

Located on 50-acres, the existing NGD data center is a Tier III facility using 100% renewable energy. The facility is rich in connectivity and has fiber delivered by many Tier 1 service providers, offering customers low latency between Wales and London of less than 1.5 milliseconds. In addition, NGD Cloud Gateway provides multiple access services, including Express Route and Connect. NGD recently became a new hosting facility for LINX Wales. The highly secure site meets the U.K. government’s highest standards, and is one of many reasons that multiple blue-chip, high growth companies currently house their IT infrastructure within NGD’s 750,000 square foot facility.

The Founders started operations of the 750,000 square feet building leased from the Welsh Assembly Government in 2010 and started developing a large base of blue chip clients. Since the acquisition of a majority stake by InfraVia in 2016, the company has witnessed exponential growth, driven by the demand of global hyperscalers, large enterprises and HPC clients. With its unparalleled size, power resources and available land bank, NGD led by CEO Justin Jenkins has now embarked on a campus development strategy with the future construction of additional premises and an IT power capacity in the campus that exceeds 180MW.

On completion of the transaction, the NGD management team and staff will continue to operate the business and Justin Jenkins will become President of Vantage, UK.

Vincent Levita, Founder and CEO of InfraVia, said:

« We have long been convinced at InfraVia that Digital is the utility of the 21st century. When we invested in 2016 alongside Simon Taylor and Nick Razey, we were confident that we could leverage NGD’s proven track record and unique selling proposition as a pure-play wholesale data center, with high specifications and unrivalled scalability thanks to high power & space availability. The speed of growth of the business since then has gone far beyond our initial plans, driven by the acceleration of the transition of IT to the Cloud. We thank Justin Jenkins and his team for their impeccable operational and commercial track record which has made NGD the destination of choice in the UK for global hyperscalers and enterprises. We are convinced that the team will continue its pace of expansion and develop the NGD campus. »

Simon Taylor and Nick Razey, founders of NGD commented:

« When we set out to create NGD in 2007 we had a vision that the unique selling points for a world leading data center would be: scalability, out of town highly secure location, carrier neutrality and focus on service level excellence. InfraVia joined us in 2016 in our journey to develop the largest data center campus in Europe. Grasping the opportunity, they provided scale capital to meet the exponential customer needs stemming from the advent of cloud computing. More importantly, as a sparring partner for us and the management, they helped transition the business from a successful entrepreneurial SME led by its founders into an institutionalized middle market enterprise under the leadership of Justin Jenkins. We are very confident that the NGD team will be very successful in serving their clients and growing further as part of the Vantage Europe team ».

Sureel Choksi, President and CEO of Vantage Data Centers, said:

« As the needs of our hyperscale, cloud and large enterprise customers continue to grow, Wales represents a highly attractive U.K. market offering both lower cost and greater scalability versus London. NGD customers benefit from very low network latency to London, low power costs and excellent fiber connectivity, coupled with the company’s massively scalable campus outside London’s highly constrained M25 area. We are thrilled to welcome Justin Jenkins and the entire NGD team to Vantage ».

The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals and is expected to close in Q3 2020.

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. The Sellers were advised by RBC (M&A), White & Case (legal), Solon (commercial) and PwC (financial and tax). Vantage Data Centers was advised by Linklaters (legal) and PwC (financial).

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PRESS CONTACTS

INFRAVIA
Vincent LEVITA Founder and CEO
vlevita@infraviacapital.com
+33 (0)1 40 68 17 38

TADDEO
Delphine Granier
delphine.granier@taddeo.fr
+33 (0)6 33 05 48 50

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