The deal is expected to close in approximately 12 months, subject to customary closing conditions.
London-based EXA Infrastructure has signed binding agreements to acquire the Irish subsea cable company Aqua Comms. The sum of the proposed acquisition has not been disclosed.
EXA Infrastructure is wholly-owned by I Squared Capital, an independent global infrastructure investment manager. It operates more than 150,000km of fibre network across 37 countries. This includes 20 cable landing stations, which provide connectivity to subsea cables.
Meanwhile, Aqua Comms is a Dublin-based business, which specialises in operating submarine cable systems. It is the owner and operator of several cables, including the AEC-1 network, which connects New York, Dublin and London via a low-latency fibre-optic network.
Last year, Aqua Comms announced a long-term lease agreement for transatlantic subsea spectrum with Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) for 25pc of a fibre pair between New York, Dublin and London. The company was acquired by Digital 9 Infrastructure in 2021 at a valuation of $215m.
The planned transaction is expected to complete in approximately 12 months, subject to customary closing conditions.
EXA Infrastructure CEO Jim Fagan, who previously acted as the CEO of Aqua Comms before his departure last February, said the deal shows EXA Infrastructure’s commitment “to build a modern and diverse transatlantic platform to fully serve AI, cloud and content demand, now and in the future”.
Fagan also maintained that the combination will offer customers “more routes, more capacity and increased diversity, all on a scaled platform”.
Akur Capital and RBC Capital Markets will act as financial advisers to EXA Infrastructure in connection with the transaction. In addition, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison is serving as legal M&A adviser to EXA Infrastructure.
Roughly 99pc of the world’s internet traffic runs through subsea cables. Currently, Ireland has 14 cables, four of which connect to the US and one of which connects to Iceland, while the rest connect to the UK. Earlier today (17 January) it was reported that Amazon plans to implement another subsea cable, this one connecting Cork to the US.
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