Six Degrees receives additional finance

Managed data services provider Six Degrees Group has secured a new £25 million credit facility with Clydesdale Bank.

This is four months after completing £60 million worth of fundraising.

The business, a new venture headed by British entrepreneur Alastair Mills, follows the sale in November 2010 of Mills’ previous business, SpiriTel, to AIM-listed communications Daisy Group for £27 million.

Six Degrees was founded through the acquisitions of data centre provider UKSolutions, technology business NetworkFlow and voice player Protel.

According to Six Degrees, the new credit facility will support its strategy of organic and acquisitive growth in the managed data services market.

Ronnie Smith, CFO of Six Degrees, says, ‘This [deal] is testament to how successful the Group has been in executing its strategic plan and we’re now at a run-rate of £30 million revenue and £9 million trading EBITDA.

‘This represents comfortable double digit organic growth and we’ve delivered well over £1 million in cross-sales in less than six months, proving that our model is working superbly well. In a challenging economic environment we’re seeing increasing demand for our range of hosting and cloud services.’

Speaking in October, Six Degrees said that it wants to capitalise on what it believes is the ‘tipping point’ in technology, with its research showing that workers see their own personal technology as better than that provided by their employees, and want to use it as an extension to existing works services.

Mark Hull, director for corporate and structured finance at Clydesdale Bank, says that Clydesdale and the directors of Six Degrees have established an ‘excellent relationship’ over a number of years.

He adds, ‘Alastair and his team have a proven track record of success and we have continually demonstrated an ability to exceed performance targets. We look forward to working closely with them as they roll out the ambitious plans they have for the coming year.’

Hunter Ruthven

Bernard Williamson

Hunter was the Editor for GrowthBusiness.co.uk from 2012 to 2014, before moving on to Caspian Media Ltd to be Editor of Real Business.

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Venture capital funding