LONDON-Vodafone Group plc announced its second acquisition in as many weeks, reporting it will acquire Singlepoint Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Caudwell Group, for $651.7 million. Singlepoint is a U.K. independent service provider with more than 1,900 employees and 1.9 million contract customers.
Market watchers predicted Arun Sarin, Vodafone’s new chief executive, would not maintain the same focus on acquisitions as his predecessor, Sir Christopher Gent, who stepped down in July. Although the acquisitions are both for wireless resellers vs. the mobile operators acquired during Gent’s reign, they do demonstrate the new leader is not backing down from Vodafone’s aggressive acquisition style.
Vodafone said it will pay for the acquisition from its “existing resources.” It added that 1.5 million of Singlepoint’s customers are Vodafone customers, representing 27 percent of its U.K. contract customer base, which will allow the global operator to cut out the middleman with numerous subscribers.
“Together with the proposed acquisition of Project Telecom, this transaction will increase the direct access to our contract customer base in the U.K. to 90 percent,” said Gavin Darby, chief executive officer of Vodafone U.K. “This will give us greater flexibility to develop customer usage of both voice and data services and to offer a consistency of service and products to an even larger section of our customer base.”
Vodafone’s planned acquisition of Project Telecom will boost its corporate presence in the United Kingdom, the operator said last week, while this most recent deal targets the consumer segment.
