Faversham House acquires Utility Week from RBI

Faversham House, the Croydon-based media company, has acquired the Utility Week portfolio from Reed Business Information (RBI).

Utility Week provides news, analysis and comment on Britain’s major electricity, gas and water utilities. The acquisition includes the Utility Week website www.utilityweek.com, the Utility Week Achievement Awards (6 December 2010) and the Utility Week Debt Conference (2 November 2010).

Faversham House Chief Executive Amanda Barnes, said: “We were delighted when RBI responded positively to our approach to acquire the Utility Week portfolio. We are extremely pleased to welcome the Utility Week team into our already successful and extensive portfolio of water, environment and sustainability titles. This acquisition underlines our commitment to grow our position as the premier provider of information into this market. There is considerable synergy with our Sustainabilitylive! exhibitions and with our world-leading edie.net environmental information portal. We look forward to working with the talented Utility Week team to maximise the opportunities this gives us.”

Jane Burgess, Managing Director of RBI said: “I’d like to thank the Utility Week team for their contribution to RBI – they are a talented team with deep experience in their sector and we wish them every success at Faversham House”

The seven-strong team joined Faversham House on Monday 26 July 2010.

How Utility Week reported the news.

LDC-backed Green Sky Energy acquires DWEC

Lloyds Development Capital (LDC) – backed Green Sky Energy, one of the UK’s leading energy management businesses, has boosted its international capabilities after acquiring two businesses from the DWEC Group.

DWEC and DWEC Europe operate in the building energy management systems (BEMS) arena, predominantly in the South of England and Channel Islands. The Group is one of the UK’s leading systems integrators and managed service providers.

Established in the early 1990s, DWEC serves a largely blue-chip client base and has carried out installations in a number of prestigious sites including Buckingham Palace the Royal Household buildings, Natural History Museum, National Gallery and the Royal Albert Hall.
 
DWEC Europe was formed in 2002 and has customers in niche sectors such as pharmaceuticals, data centres and European wide media businesses. The company has developed a strong international capability and regularly carries out projects across Europe.
 
Green Sky Energy received a £10 million equity injection from LDC in March this year to acquire Matrix Group. Matrix is one of the UK’s market leading sustainable energy services organisations, deploying unified energy services to its blue chip client base, which includes Tesco, Marks & Spencer, BAE Systems and the BBC.
 
The acquisitions of DWEC and DWEC Europe were funded by a further equity investment from LDC and were led by LDC Investment Directors Jonathan Bell and Jon Pickering.
 
The deal brings the combined group turnover to over £36 million and strengthens its international offering as well as its focus in the key markets of London and the South East of England.
 
Jonathan Bell at LDC said: “LDC is committed to providing high quality companies with the means to build scale organically and through acquisitions. The deal represents an excellent strategic and geographic fit for Matrix, adding more bandwidth to the group’s services as well as proven technical skills.
 
“This complementary acquisition also enables Green Sky to continue to meet the growing demands of its customers, who are increasingly keen to reduce their energy consumption as a result of the introduction in April of the new CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, continued price volatility in the energy markets and the growing importance of efficiency as part of their corporate social responsibility strategies.”
 
Ian Kelly, Chief Executive, said: “This acquisition and investment is an exciting time for us all, allowing us to scale our already unique market position and continue our strategic partnering with leading UK brands that are looking for credible, national managed energy services providers.
 
“The challenges of both rising energy costs and carbon reduction legislation across large property estates are really driving the market and it’s key that we maintain and further develop our service capability for our clients in both reach and technical expertise, and DWEC enhances our client services significantly.”
 
“Since the deal, we’ve worked closely with LDC and the additional funding will enable us to build a true market-leading presence in the energy management sector with unrivalled depth and breadth of capability and skills, both technical and operational.”
 
Following the investment, the Operations Board will be further strengthened with the appointments of David Woodhams, Founder and Chairman of DWEC and Darren Chenery, Director of DWEC Europe, who have over 40 years combined industry experience. Both Dave and Darren have invested in Green Sky Energy alongside existing investors.
 
David Woodhams said: “We are delighted to be a major part of the UK’s market leader in building energy solutions. The merging of DWEC and Matrix has created a business capable of national energy service delivery to meet the demands of the new dynamic energy market”

Location UK, London & East Sussex

Bglobal acquires Utiligroup

Bglobal plc (AIM: BGBL), the smart metering and energy data company,  has acquired the entire issued share capital of Utiligroup, a provider of energy data management and process solutions to companies operating in the energy and utilities sectors, for a maximum consideration of up to £12.8 million. The deal completed in June 2010.

Bglobal are financing the deal through a £6.5 million placing and raised approximately a £1.5 million open offer of 17,785,547 new ordinary shares at a price of 38p each.

Utiligroup has three principal wholly owned trading subsidiaries:

  • Utilisoft, one of the UK’s leading providers of energy data management and process solutions to companies operating in the energy and utilities sector;
  • Utilisoft Australia, an established supplier of software solutions to the energy and utilities sector in Australia and Singapore; and 
  • Utiliserve, which offers managed service and IT application outsourcing capabilities to utility companies.

The maximum consideration payable is £12.8 million to be satisfied by:

  • An initial consideration of £5.3 million, to be satisfied by £4.3 million in cash and £1.0 million worth of new Shares issued at 43p each. 
  • A performance consideration of up to £7.5 million, dependent on the trading performance of Utiligroup in the year ending 31 March 2011, to be satisfied by up to £4.125 million in cash and up to £3.375 million in new Shares.

Commenting, Tony Barnes, Chief Executive of Bglobal said: “Utiligroup is the UK’s leading energy data software specialist and together with smart metering leader Bglobal Metering we are creating the UK’s premier energy data solutions business positioned to deliver the full end-to-end smart energy solutions that our UK customers and markets all over the World are beginning to demand.

“Even before the widespread domestic roll out of smart meters in the UK, smart metering is driving the creation of innovative new business models and Bglobal is positioning itself to lead in these opportunities.

“Whist the focus to date has been the logistical effort of meter exchange, the growing challenge facing the industry in our view is the management and application of vast and continuous flows of smart meter data and the requirement to build entirely new types of information systems to process it.

“Government policy and sustainability agendas are driving Britain towards the Smart Grid and as customers start generating their own energy and expect to be paid for doing so, companies who quickly deliver customers with products that support the transition to a low carbon economy are most likely to gain advantage.

“The enlarged Group’s strategy is to create a full service, end-to-end smart energy value chain of products, services and new software applications which will help to build Britain’s low carbon, smart energy future.

“This acquisition places the Group in a strong position to capitalise on these opportunities. With nearly 230 expert staff, an international customer base and operations in the UK and Australia we are confident the expanded Group has the expertise, experience, knowledge and reach to realise our vision of making energy count for our customers in the UK and Globally.”

John Furness, Managing Director of Utiligroup, said: “Being part of Bglobal plc provides Utiligroup with a wonderful opportunity not only to extend the reach of our software solutions and service businesses, but also to play a part in building compelling end-to-end deliverables with Bglobal Metering, harnessing the expertise of both organisations. This union will accelerate the growth of Utiligroup, from both the UK and Australian bases, in ways we could not have achieved without the strength of Bglobal plc, and we look forward to our role in a major force that will build a smart energy world.”

Location: UK, Lancashire

Dice Holdings acquires Rigzone

Dice Holdings, a leading provider of specialised career websites for professional communities, today announced it has completed the purchase of Rigzone, a U.S. market leader in the oil and gas industry delivering content, data, advertising and career services.

“The acquisition of Rigzone extends our capabilities and strengthens our position in the highly attractive energy vertical,” said Scot Melland, Chairman, President & CEO of Dice Holdings, Inc.  “The Rigzone and WorldwideWorker services complement each other with Rigzone’s traditional strength in North America and WorldwideWorker’s focus on the Middle East and emerging markets.  And, both teams share a commitment to quality and a desire to serve the energy industry on a global basis.”

Known as the online gateway to the oil and gas industry, Rigzone is the world’s most-used source for upstream oil and gas news and data, including in-depth information on the exploration, drilling and production markets.  Rigzone has built a valuable and largely-passive community with more than 500,000 unique visitors each month and more than 270,000 resumes in their database covering skills ranging from production operators to petroleum engineers.

“The Dice team has the strongest vision for the future direction of online recruiting, while recognizing the value of our unique and valuable content,” said David Kent, President of Rigzone.  “We are truly excited about working with our colleagues from Des Moines to Dubai connecting top talent with organizations that are tackling the energy challenge.”

The purchase price consists of initial consideration of $39 million in cash.  Additional consideration to a maximum of $16 million in cash is payable upon the achievement of certain operating and financial goals through June 30, 2011.

The Jordan, Edmiston Group acted as Rigzone’s financial advisor.

Location: USA, New York, NY

Related Article

Power Assure gets $18.75 Million in new funds

Power Assure, a provider of software solutions to optimize capacity, service levels, and power consumption within and across data centers, has raised $11.25 million in funding from Good Energies, Point Judith Capital, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The company also announced the addition of Bernard Brenninkmeijer from Good Energies and Zaid Ashai with Point Judith Capital as new members of its board of directors. Power Assure is also the recipient of a $5 million grant from the Department of Energy providing the company with $18.75 million in total capital. This new infusion of funds will be used to expand the company’s sales and go-to-market initiatives for its optimization solutions, currently in production at large enterprise and government data centers.

Building on its suite of dynamic power management solutions for data centers, Power Assure has expanded the capabilities of its software-as-a-service-based platform to include both capacity and performance management features. The company has also developed its own proprietary runbook automation system to speed up, as well as simplify, customer management and maintenance functions. With the support of the Department of Energy, the company is also developing innovative load-shedding and shifting services to dynamically optimize power, capacity, and performance levels across geographically-dispersed data centers. With Power Assure solutions, CIOs, as well as IT and facilities managers, can extend the longevity of their existing data centers while maintaining critical customer service levels.

“The cost to build out a new data center today is averaging $100 million,” said Bernard Brenninkmeijer, Investment Director with Good Energies and newly appointed to the Power Assure Board of Directors. “As a result, data center operators are seeking solutions like Power Assure’s to extend the life spans of their existing data centers.”

Also joining Power Assure’s board of directors is Zaid Ashai, a partner with Point Judith Capital where he leads the firm’s cleantech investing efforts with a focus on energy IT.

“CIOs and data center operators are being asked to accomplish seemingly contradictory objectives, namely to maintain or even increase service performance levels while decreasing operating and energy costs,” said Ashai. “That’s exactly what Power Assure’s data center optimization technology is addressing.”

“Securing additional investment capital, especially in this recessionary climate, will allow us to hire the people we need to meet the demand we’re seeing for our products in the market,” said Brad Wurtz, CEO of Power Assure. “While curbing the enormous energy appetites of data centers and spiraling costs associated with their power consumption is one of our core competencies, our investors recognize that the optimization of data centers goes well beyond just managing power. By combining power, capacity, and performance management services with advanced load shedding and shifting technologies, we are giving our customers the tools they need to achieve new levels of efficiency in their data centers.”

Location: USA, Santa Clara, CA

Ref: F231109-497

Spice PLC release their results for the year to April 2010

Spice PLC have released their final results for the year to April 2010

Financial Summary

  • Revenue £310.7m up 11%
  • EBITA £36.1m up 8%
  • PBTA £31.5m Unchanged
  • Total dividend 1.62p 8%
  • Net debt £117.5m
  • Pro-forma net debt (post Telecoms business sale) £91.0m

Highlights

  • £31.3 million was spent on acquisitions in the year. £17.0 million on new acquisitions and £14.3 million on earnouts.
  • The supply Division generated revenues of £40.9 million and EBITA of £18.1 million.
  • The Distribution Division generated revenues of £269.8 million and EBITA of £26.7 million
  • The energy business (Supply Division) grew revenue by 32% in fragmented growth markets – record year for new customers. The stated strategy is to grow the successful Energy business which is already a major player in the fragmented global growth market, and build an international presence

Immediate Strategy

  • Capitalise on growth opportunities in utilities and energy markets
  • Further disposal of non-core assets
  • Attention to cost base /re-focus on organic growth
  • Reduce net debt to less than 2x EBITD

Medium Term Strategy

  • Focus on attractive markets with strong underlying regulatory and environmental drivers
  • Leverage Distribution’s technical skills and capabilities in the UK and internationally
  • Grow successful Energy business which is a major player in fragmented global growth market – build international presence
  • Maintain dominant Billing position in the UK and seek to develop USA markets
  • No sacred cows exist. Focus on optimum shareholder value

Related link – Final results presentation

Location: UK,  Leeds

Ref: F231109-490

eMeter business Smart Grid raises $12.5 million

eMeter Corporation, a Smart Grid management software company, has closed a $12.5 million round of private financing led by longtime investors Sequoia Capital and Foundation Capital, and joined by new investor Northgate Capital looking to leverage eMeter’s leadership providing software solutions to enable successful Smart Grid implementations. Given the exponential growth of the Smart Grid industry over the past year, eMeter will use the new funding to expand eMeter’s sales and marketing efforts in key markets, enhance services to current customers and continue investing in new products.

Since the last round of funding almost a year ago, the company has hired industry-recognized enterprise software veteran Gary Bloom as CEO, while continuing to show tremendous growth working with leading technology partners, such as IBM, Intergraph, SAP and Siemens, and signing new utility customers including Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative, Burbank Water and Power, Centerpoint Energy, Silicon Valley Power, Westar Energy, Central Vermont Power and most recently, Wabash Energy here in the U.S. Internationally, eMeter inked deals with UK-based Electralink, Ontario, Canada’s Independent Electricity System Operator, Germany’s EnBW Ostwurttemberg Donau Ries AG and Umetriq, and Vattenfall AB, Europe’s fourth largest generator of electricity and the largest producer of heat, and is responsible for over 6 million utility customers across Finland, Sweden, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. Finally, leading analyst firm Gartner gave eMeter a “positive” ranking in its latest “Marketscope for Meter Data Management Products” report, while The Wall Street Journal recognized the company as one of the top 10 venture-backed clean technology companies.

Gary Bloom, CEO of eMeter, said, “As a result of our maniacal focus on the customer, the eMeter platform is being used in the most successful Smart Grid deployments around the world. I’m pleased to welcome Northgate Capital to our growing list of investors at a time when more and more utilities and consumers are embracing Smart Grid technology. With this additional capital, and the continued support of both Sequoia and Foundation, we have further strengthened the company for continued growth and momentum working with and educating utilities and consumers worldwide about eMeter’s unique approach to enabling the Smart Grid.”

Location: USA, San Mateo, C

EA Technology Ventures has appointed Stuart Thompson as managing director

EA Technology Ventures has appointed Stuart Thompson as managing director. EA technology Ventures is a specialist company which works with businesses and investors from the clean and new energy sector to take innovative ideas to market. It is a subsidiary of the EA Technology Group, which is based in England’s Northwest and has over 40 years’ of research and development in the electricity industry.

Stuart brings together a wealth of experience from the engineering, electricity and telecommunications sectors, and has worked alongside several of the world’s leading solutions providers in the development of high specification telecom and data networks.

In his previous role, as Head of Business Development at EA Technology Consulting, Stuart was instrumental in increasing the revenues of the business by over 100%.

Stuart is on the committees of the Institute of Asset Management and the Institute of Engineering and Technology. He is a Chartered Marketer with an MBA and is also a member of the Institute of Directors.

Location: UK, Chester

Ref: F231109-476

Infrax Systems acquires Trimax Wireless

Infrax Systems, a global provider of unified Smart Grid-related products and services for the Energy and Utility industries, today announced the completion of the acquisition of Trimax Wireless, a privately-held, leading edge designer, developer and manufacturer of advanced carrier-grade broadband wireless equipment and other innovative technologies.

“The acquisition of Trimax is a critical step in the growth of Infrax Systems,” states INFRAX CEO, Paul Aiello. “TRIMAX is the perfect complement to INFRAX Systems, giving us greater capabilities, industry position, a clear competitive advantage and additional revenue streams. Their innovative technology integration is core to solving the connectivity issues that arise from the deployment of thousand of intelligent devices along the electrical grid. We are pleased to welcome Trimax to the Infrax family.”

The acquisition was made in accordance to an earlier announcement, for approximately US$10M in a combination of cash and Preferred stock. Trimax had over $1.2M in broadband revenues in 2009 and the combined Company is projecting $6M for the current fiscal year. In addition to their core wireless broadband product offering, the multi-protocol hardware developed and manufactured by Trimax, will provide utilities with a cost effective, robust and very reliable last mile two-way communications solution for upgrading older meters and enhancing the newer ones.

Smart meter penetration in the U.S. is expected to grow to 13.6 million units by the end of this year and more than 33 million units by 2011. Global deployments are expected to exceed 212 million units or $46B by 2014.

Location: USA, St. Petersburg, CA

Ref: F231109-472

A Fusion Deal: Encore International sold to McKinnon and Clarke

Fusion Corporate Partners are pleased to announce our latest deal, the sale of energy price risk management company Encore International for £6.25 million to McKinnon & Clarke, an energy procurement and compliance specialist headquartered in Edinburgh. McKinnon and Clare are a portfolio company of private equity business, Lyceum Capital. The enlarged business will be re-named M&C Energy Group on the 1st of July.

Fusion Corporate Partners acted as exclusive advisers to the shareholders of Encore International.  Paul Kelly (pkelly@fusioncorp.co.uk) led the transaction at Fusion. It is the third energy consultancy sector deal completed by Fusion. Previous deals were;

As previously reported on Fusion DigiNet, Lyceum Capital acquired McKinnon and Clark in January this year for £22 million.

Founded in 2001, London-headquartered Encore is an independent advisor with a major operational base in Budapest and sales offices in the Netherlands and Germany. Its services include developing control policies, tendering and negotiating contracts, budget risk analysis, environmental auditing and reporting and live market transaction support and invoice settlement. Encore handles more than €2.4 billion of procurement annually on behalf of over 150 blue chip customers across 16 European countries.

markdickinsonEncore International’s Managing Director, Mark Dickinson, and European Sales Director, Colin Gebhard, will join the management team of M&C Energy Group.

The acquisition increases McKinnon and Clarkes turnover to more than £30 million and creates significant geographical and cross-selling synergies which will open up new commercial opportunities within the client base.

Dan Adler, Partner at Lyceum Capital, said: “The volatility and complexity of the global energy markets require large corporates to manage risks associated with energy procurement with the same rigour as they do in other areas such as interest rates and foreign exchange.

“With its ability to monitor and alter risk positions on a 24/7 basis, Encore International has unparalleled market coverage and is the only business capable of providing clients with round the
clock access to the latest data and advice.

“Encore will now benefit from the investment we’ve made in M&C’s infrastructure and the deal demonstrates our ongoing commitment to consolidating this highly fragmented market around a robust platform business.”

Simon Northrop, CEO of M&C, said: “Like McKinnon and Clarke, Encore has over the years justifiably earned a place as one of the best respected companies working within the industry.

“Now by combining our complementary skills and experience, I am confident that we can deliver additional benefits to current clients of both companies and of course also to future clients across
the globe.

“As environmental legislation rises higher up the business agenda, organisations will need our services to ensure they are operating to maximum efficiency and within the law. M&C is making sure that, through acquisitions and significant investment in infrastructure, we are well placed to offer our clients unrivalled scale and expertise.”

Paul Kelly, Senior Associate at Fusion, said “We were delighted to work with Mark Dickinson and his team at Encore International. They have built a great business and the fit with McKinnon and Clarke is excellent. The energy services sector is a fragmented market where even the biggest players only have a small market share. Fusion expects to see further consolidation in the market. I expect Fusion to continue to be active in the space over the coming years”.

Location: UK, Edinburgh and London

Ref: F231109-508

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