Listed telecommunications provider M2 (ASX:MTU) has continued its acquisition spree announcing it is to purchase the mobile contracts and records of 15,000 Austar customers in a $2 million deal.
According to an ASX statement the deal will provide a means for M2 to expand its Southern Cross mobile business.
The Austar customer base generates some $10 million in annualised revenues and is expected to add $1.3 million in EBITDA to M2 in the 2011/12 financial year.
“Whilst only relatively modest in scale, this transaction represented an opportunity to cost-effectively expand out Southern Cross Telco business with the sizable, high quality Austar mobile customer base,” M2 managing director, Vaughan Bowen said in the ASX statement.
“Our Hobart-based customer operations team have considerable experience in supporting the telco requirements of regional Australia, having specialised in that market for more than a decade, which will ensure that the Austar mobile customers are enthusiastically welcomed.”
The acquisition follows swift on the heels of M2’s $24.5 million purchase of the business and assets of Clear Telecoms in 1 February.
The purchase allowed M2 to gain nearly 20,000 additional small and medium business customers generating some $70 million in revenues annually.
In November M2 signed a binding agreement to acquire the assets of NZ telco, Black and White Group.. The acquisition included all Black and White customer contracts, operating systems and intellectual property including the ‘Black + White’ brand.
The sale by Austar follows NBN Co's snapping of a subsidiary of the company in a $120 million deal that will give the National Broadband Network (NBN) wholesaler wireless spectra needed to roll out fixed wireless services to four per cent of Australian premises.
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