1. Babble
Deals announced in 2023: 10 (NTE – July, Talking Technology – July, Unicomm – July, Simple Digital Solutions – July, Midland Comms – March, Cloudstream Technology – March, TechQuarters – March, Stonegate – March, CWL – February, Avandda – February)
Appetite for M&A
With ten acquisitions announced already in 2023 (and 34 since 2018), Babble is undoubtedly the UK’s most acquisitive MSP going by volume of deals.
The Graphite Capital-backed cloud comms specialist’s annual revenue runrate now tops £120m as it continues to pounce on targets that fit its brief – namely asset-light MSPs with post-acquisition EBITDA of between £500,000 and £1.5m.
The longer-term goal is to build the UK’s first £1bn-revenue cloud services provider.
The second half of 2023 is set to be “even busier”, it promised, with CEO Matt Parker expecting to ink another eight deals.
The unified comms specialists announced two deals in February, four in March (see here and here) and four in July, with Microsoft partner TechQuarters among the 2023 deals (although we understand that two of the ten were actually closed at the end of 2022).
What they said
“The start of this year has been busy for Babble, with eight acquisitions and investment in additional resource, capacity, capability and expertise to serve our growing customer base. We’re set to build on this success with further expansion in 2023 and remain on track for a record M&A year for Babble” – Babble CEO Matt Parker
Fun fact
Babble changed its name from ‘IP Solutions’ in 2019 because its leadership didn’t like the term ‘solutions’ (see this blog here).
