UK infrastructure fund Digital 9 Infrastructure is aiming to sell its European data center company Verne Global amid shareholder pressure.
After announcing plans to sell a minority stake in the firm, this week the infrastructure investor said it in the coming months, it will completely divest itself of the company, which operates facilities in the UK, Finland, and Iceland. It has now seemingly secured a buyer.
“After careful consideration of the feedback received during the shareholder consultation, among the actions the Board is assessing is a divestment of the company's entire stake in the Verne Global group of companies,” D9 said in an announcement this week.
D9 added that it has received indicative offers from interested parties during a competitive process to syndicate a majority stake in Verne Global to a strategic capital partner. The buyer was not named.
Terms of the deal are expected to be announced in Q4 2023. Further updates are expected in due course.
D9 hasn't owned Verne very long. In March 2021, investment firm Triple Point raised £300 million ($408m) from an IPO through D9, with plans to acquire a number of digital infrastructure firms.
D9 bought Verne for £231 million ($320m at the time) in 2021. Verne operates a 24MW data center campus on a former NATO site near Keflavik, Iceland, offering colocation and high-performance computing services. D9 has since acquired and merged Finnish data center firm Ficolo and London’s Volta Data Centres into the Verne brand.
Earlier this year D9 said it had initiated a competitive process to syndicate a minority stake in the Verne Global group of companies to strategic capital partners, but aimed to retain a majority stake in the firm.
Verne reportedly has a five-year pipeline to expand the capacity of its data center campus in Iceland from the current 40MW to over 96MW, which will require £390 million ($483.6m) in capital expenditure. The company secured a $100 million loan in June 2023 to fund its expansion plans.
The D9 Board said it believes the new deal would strengthen the company’s position, and “further maximize” shareholder value.
