Russian construction firm FSK Group has acquired digital holding company Filanco Group.
ComNews.ru, FSK has bought 70 percent of the Filanco Group, which offers data center services through its DataHouse unit and telecoms services through its CityTelecom unit.
"Telecommunication services are one of the fastest growing areas of business, so our company bought out a large share of Filanco Group, the remaining 30 percent remained with the previous owner. We are glad that residents of our residential complexes will be able to receive high quality services, the level of which we can control,” said FSK owner & president, Vladimir Voronin.
Filanco operates a number of digital infrastructure and software companies. CityTelecom provides Internet, telephony, and TV services via a 2,000 km fiber-optic network in Moscow and St. Petersburg. DataHouse, launched in 2006, operates three data centers; A 3,475 sqm (37400 sq ft) facility in Moscow purchased from Yandex in 2017 that offers 9.8MW across 475 racks; a 52 sqm (560 sq ft) facility in St. Petersburg that opened in 2010 and offers 0.3MW across 20 racks; and a 114 sqm (1,225 sq ft), 0.8MW facility in Yekaterinburg offering 52 racks.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Freedom Finance Global analyst Vladimir Chernov believes that the purchase price could be 1.2-2.4 billion rubles, with most Russian operators selling in recent years for 1-2x revenue. Filanco Group Development Director Konstantin Nikolsky told ComNews that the revenue of the entire group in 2021 amounted to 1.2 billion rubles.
The two companies have a pre-existing data center joint venture, known as FSK-TsOD LLC, which is building a 60MW facility in Moscow at 12 1st Magistralnaya St., in Moscow. The companies are investing more than 30 billion rubles.
Filanco CEO Dmitry Sharov also said the companies aim to acquire & develop an electric grid and energy sales company; this interest is due to the desire to get the most favorable electricity tariffs for data centers.
"In the communications sector, after the completion of the stage of its active consolidation, a business valuation level has long been formed, rarely exceeding 5xEBITDA, which, in the presence of synergies from a transaction with the provision of communications services in the buyer's residential real estate fund, should ensure a not too long payback period for the operator part of the business," said Mikhail Afonin, CEO of Voskhod Capital. “In the data center business, the parties had already cooperated as co-investors before the deal, and it seems logical to combine their efforts in this demanded and growing client segment, and focusing on B2B in general will allow maintaining the ability to work on other commercial real estate objects developers".
Meanwhile, telecommunication systems and solutions vendor Intracom Telecom has completed its exit from Russia in the wake of the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
