Cube to acquire German data centre business firstcolo

Infrastructure investor, Cube Infrastructure Managers (Cube), is to acquire firstcolo datacenters GmbH (firstcolo) for an undisclosed sum.

Firstcolo is a Frankfurt-based data centre business and provider of colocation, dedicated servers, managed services and private cloud solutions. The transaction is to be financed by the Cube Infrastructure Fund III, which had its first close in September 2021, reaching €1 billion. Cube is acquiring firstcolo from funds advised by EMERAM Capital Partners (EMERAM) and its portfolio company diva-e Excellence GmbH (diva-e).

“Cube invests in businesses which capitalise on megatrends driving the need for sustainable infrastructure. In the digital sector, Cube has conducted a dozen transactions since 2008, partnering with talented management teams to achieve strong and sustainable growth. We believe firstcolo to be very well positioned to address the increasing needs of German SMEs in terms of colocation and cloud services, with the ability to anticipate the future needs of customers,” said Stéphane Calas, Partner at Cube Infrastructure Managers. 

Addressing the increasing needs of German SMEs

Founded in 2007 and expanded through the acquisition of Accelerated IT in 2017, firstcolo’s portfolio comprises two Tier III+ data centres in Frankfurt both of which are powered by 100% green electricity. 

Once EMERAM and diva-e joined as majority shareholders, firstcolo saw its revenues and profitability around its core colocation offering grow, bolstered by its entry into new high growth areas such as private cloud solutions.

Dr. Alexis Tran-Viet, Partner at EMERAM, commented: “We are proud to have supported firstcolo to become one of the leading and most efficient data centre players in the Frankfurt region with a differentiated and customer-centric value proposition. It has been a pleasure to partner with Jerome Evans and Nicolaj Kamensek who have done a fantastic job in executing the joint value creation plan which we foresaw at the time of the original acquisitions.” 

Founders Jerome Evans and Nicolaj Kamensek will remain shareholders of firstcolo, continuing to lead the company in the next growth phase. No closing date has been shared and the deal is still subject to customary closing conditions.

Jerome Evans, CEO at firstcolo, noted: “Over the past five years, we more than doubled our revenue and assets and expanded into new areas such as private cloud. With Cube, we have gained a long-term oriented owner who will support us with our ambition to expand the platform and to triple in size. Our goal is to build more data centres in the future that have industry-leading PUE values in terms of energy efficiency. Together, we will continue our journey of growth and digitalisation.”