Daisy Group will reportedly be put up for a £1.5 billion bid in a sale process that will end at the beginning of 2018.
This is according to sources close to Sky News. Daisy is to appoint investment bankers in the next few weeks to handle the sale process.
Sources said Daisy is projected to make earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of about £150m in the year to March 2019.
Daisy’s peer group tends to trade off multiples of nearly 11 times EBITDA, meaning a sale could value Daisy at more than £1.5bn.
Insiders said the Lancashire-based firm was likely to explore interest from financial investors and international telecoms and IT firms. Liberty Global has been rumoured to bid for Daisy in the past.
The group was set up by chairman Matthew Riley (pictured) in 2001. He took the firm private from London’s junior stock market in 2014.
Daisy Group has 60,000 direct partners and 4,000 members of staff.
A Daisy Group spokesperson told Mobile News: “We do not comment on speculation. Daisy is a privately owned business and its management team’s focus is solely on continuing to build on its position as the UK’s largest independent provider of business communications, IT and cloud services.”