ESAT Telecom said yesterday that it had bought the Kedington Group, which it claims is Ireland's largest networking group for an initial payment of £9 million (€11.43). The deal is worth a total of £15 million as there is a £6 million earn-out over the next three years.
Kedington specialises in providing network solutions and services to the IT industry. The company designs network and equipment solutions to create Intelligent Offices, Internets, local and wide area networks, voice and data networks. Kedington had a turnover of £12.5 million for the year to last March, with pre-tax profits of £850,000. Its net assets are £1.4 million.
The deal will also allow for the company to earn additional consideration of up to £2.5 million at the end of the third year if it achieves a certain level of performance over and above the earnout target.
Kedington, which was established in 1989, employs 19 people. It has operations in Dublin, Limerick, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Its customers include Oracle, Microsoft, Unisys, Ulster Bank, Elan, Siemens and Tesco.
Esat claimed that together with its existing systems' integration companies BridgeCom and the recently acquired Viewpoint DataComms, the deal will position it as "the number one networking player in Ireland".
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