Leighton Holdings’ telco, datacentre, managed hostings assets up for sale

The non-core assets include Nextgen Networks, Metronode, and Infoplex

Construction contractor, Leighton Holdings, has put up for sale its telco services subsidiary, Nextgen Networks, datacentre company, Metronode, and Cloud and managed hosting services provider, Infoplex.

ASX-listed (ASX:LEI) Leighton recently said in a filing with the Australian Stock Exchange it has hired Macquarie Capital to explore the sale for the assets.

The decision is part of the company’s previously announced strategy of recycling capital as these assets are non-core, the company said.

The assets could be worth up to $1 billion, according to a recent media report . Telsyte analyst, Rodney Gedda, claimed they could potentially be of interest to a range of Australian or overseas IT companies that operate in the telco, datacentre or Cloud hosting space.

Nextgen may interest a consumer-focused telco that is looking to expand in to the enterprise market. While there will be plenty of Australian and overseas companies that are looking to grow both in the Cloud services space and IT services providers looking to enhance their datacentres, he said.

Leighton CEO, Hamish Tyrwhitt, said construction, maintenance and field services opportunities in the telecommunications sector remain strong and are not dependent on the ownership of telecommunications assets.

Nextgen Networks owns and operates Australian fibre optic network spanning over 18,000 kms and connecting capital cities and major regional centres. The network was expanded significantly in 2011 connecting Brisbane to Darwin, as a result of Nextgen winning the Regional Backbone Blackspots Program (or RBBP) and Nextgen took up a long term lease on the network.

Metronode, a datacentre specialist, has assets throughout Australia and expertise in next generation data centre design and construction. Metronode currently operates six data centres in Australia. This includes five facilities providing a total of 2.8MW capacity and one Generation 2 data centre in Melbourne opened in July 2012, with 1.5MW capacity expandable to 12.2MW. Three further Generation 2 data centres are being constructed in Sydney, Illawara and Perth, with one more in Canberra in the planning phase.

Infoplex is a private cloud and managed hosting services. Its services provide data storage and retrieval solution to organisations preferring not to purchase and maintain their own physical IT infrastructure.

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