Pan-European telco Colt, which has worked hard in the last few years to re-invent itself as an IT services company, is at the center of much speculation that its venture capital owners – Colt is two-thirds owned by US fund management company Fidelity - are looking to sell it.

The rumors follow the publication of disappointing first quarter financial results when Colt also announced an almost complete withdrawal from the carrier voice market and a strategic review and reorganization of its lines of business to assist management in the prioritization and focus of investment.

Colt is reorganizing into four lines of business: network services, IT services, data centre services and voice services.

As for the numbers, revenue for the quarter was up 2% year on year to €399.8m, while Ebitda was down by 8% to €74.1m with margin compression coming in part from changes in the product mix and bandwidth pricing pressure.

CEO Rakesh Bhasin said he expects 2014 Ebitda to be as much as 10% lower than current analyst estimates of €325m. He added that the restructuring charge in the second half of the year will be about €30m.

All of this has set the rumor mill turning. Nomura set it in motion with a note saying “we expect several shareholders to be losing patience with Colt, and we expect continued weakness in the shares in the coming weeks.

Colt is expected to provide a much-needed strategy update to investors and shareholders with the first half results or shortly after”.

Since then a number of names have surfaced as possible contenders, with Vodafone, Zayo and Level 3 all bandied about by commentators as companies which might be interested buying Colt.

Vodafone is cash rich and wants to increase its presence in the enterprise market, while US firm Zayo has for some time hinted that it would be interested in an acquisition in Europe, and Level 3, which has done the same. For its part, Colt is not commenting on the rumors.

Chris Lewis, a telecoms analyst with stints at Ovum, Yankee Group and IDC and now heading up Lewis Insight, said that Colt is an attractive asset and has long been an obvious acquisition target because of its pan European infrastructure and connectivity to financial districts.

“The exit from carrier voice is not that surprising,” he said “that’s a scale business and Colt is a relatively small player. But I think Colt will only be sold when Fidelity is ready to sell - the reorganisation will have been discussed and agreed with them, and they have shunned any approaches in the past.”