Datatec buys Indonesian ICT firm
DATATEC, the international information and communications technology (ICT) group, has announced that it has acquired a 54-percent majority stake in Packet Systems Indonesia (PSI) for $6.8 million (R88.74m).
Datatec will acquire PSI through its subsidiary, Logicalis Group, together with its Indonesian partner, Metrodata.
Metrodata will acquire a 14-percent shareholding in PSI and the remaining 32 percent will continue to be held by PSI management.
The Logicalis acquisition will be funded from Logicalis’s existing bank facilities.
Datatec chief executive Jens Montanana said: “This acquisition is strategically important for Logicalis, as it will serve to enhance its operations beyond Indonesia and across the Asia-Pacific region. Blending Logicalis’s methodology and experience with PSI’s scale and customer reach will bring wider scale and customer relationships across a number of highgrowth regional markets.”
The transaction is expected to be finalised in the third quarter of this year.
PSI is a leading ICT systems integrator and service company in Indonesia. As a result of the acquisition, it will be integrated with Logicalis Metrodata Indonesia, which is Logicalis’s existing Indonesian operation.
Peter Takaendesa, a portfolio manager at Mergence Investment Managers, said the acquisition was not material at this stage in the context of the bigger Logicalis Group.
“However, the transaction provides significant growth potential (over the) longer term given the size of the Indonesian market, and management also appears to be targeting using the Indonesian base to expand into other Asian markets.
“Logicalis has expanded its geographic presence significantly over the past decade and is now one of the most geographically diversified global IT services companies. Operating scale is very important in the IT services market where most of the large clients are multinationals that look for IT services providers with a wide geographic deployment capability,” Takaendesa said.
In its 2016 financial year, PSI reported revenue of $77.4m and profit before tax of $4.9m. Net assets at the end of December 2016 were $11.1m.
Datatec said it believed that acquiring PSI was the right decision, because the Indonesian telecommunications sector is the fourth largest in the world and the ICT market is continuing to show strong growth.
It said the transaction will bring additional scale to Logicalis’s Indonesian operation and provide an opportunity to leverage PSI’s skills and experience in other locations across the region.