Vonage opens new headquarters in London for European expansion plans

The communications provider is still on target to hit total revenue projection of £754m by year end

Vonage is setting its sights on European expansion through potential acquisitions after opening a new European headquarters in East London on September 27.

Although acquisitions won’t be made this year, chief executive officer Alan Masarek confirmed that the cloud communications provider is looking to “grow organically and inorganically”.

Future acquisitions

“It [acquisitions] won’t be part of any of our growth this year. But we are likely to make more in the future, where the markets are mature enough to want the investment.

“The UK market is a vertical one that warrants investment. We have the capacity and stock to make additional acquisitions”, Masarek said.

Vonage has acquired six unified communications firms globally in the last six years expanding itself into the B2B channel. Its past acquisitions include Vocalocity (2013) for £98.1m, Telesphere (2014) £86m, iCore Networks (2015) £69.4m, SimpleSignal (2015) £19m, and gUnify (2015) for an undisclosed fee.

“We began building this business segment through acquisitions, that’s now our majority segment. It just overtook consumer business in the third quarter of this year, with the help of organic growth. Revenue in companies we’ve acquired has doubled under our ownership,” said Masarek.

Vonage serves 97,000 businesses globally, including Realogy, Party City, WeWorks, Gett, AirBnB and Snapchat – to name but a few.

Revenue Growth

The global firm went public on the New York Stock exchange in 2006. Revenue for 2016 was $955m(£721m) at the end of its financial year ending in December, up from $895m (£675m) year-on-year. It is on target to hit $1bn (£754m) in total revenue by year end.

In Q2 the three months ending in June, Vonage’s UK arm reported £5.2 million in revenue, on track to hit its £20 million target by year’s end.

It’s most recent buy was unified communications provider Nexmo for £172m. From striking this deal, Vonage moved into its new European headquarters in East London, trippling its footprint to 22,000 square feet compared to its original Hammersmith offices where it has been located since 2001.

Engineering staff

The head office holds around 200 members of staff with the capacity for 300. Masarek confirmed Vonage is looking to recruit up to 100 members of staff in the next 18 months primarily in engineering to fill the offices and fuel further growth.

The CEO added: “We’re a billion dollar revenue company contributing £165m to Wall Street this year. We’ve consistently grown in the last four years. In the next 18 months we’ll probably get to 300 employees. So far we’ve added 50 people here already since June.”