Kingspan buys data centre specialist BMC Manufacturing in deal worth up to €900m

Building materials group Kingspan has signalled a landmark expansion of its data centre business with the purchase for up to €900 million of BMC Manufacturing Group.The agreement to purchase 100 per cent of BMC was announced after Irish markets closed on Tuesday.It comes just days after the Cavan-based insulation giant paused a €650 million share buyback programme to “appraise potential opportunities” in its acquisition pipeline.Shares in Kingspan had surged almost 21 per cent on that news last Friday, alongside higher guidance on full-year profits.READ MOREBMC, founded by Brendan Meehan in Ashbourne, Co Meath, in 1991, designs, engineers and manufactures low-voltage switchgear and critical power-management solutions for the data-centre industry.The business has been growing rapidly in recent years. Turnover and pretax profit quadrupled in just two years to the end of last year when they stood at €105 million and €22.5 million respectively. Staff numbers trebled over that time to 212 people.Announcing the deal, Kingspan said BMC expected turnover to more than double again this year to €280 million, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) of about €90 million. Ebitda is expected to double again in 2027 to €180 million.BMC has focused increasingly on markets outside Ireland in recent years when an effective freeze on data-centre development was in place here. Last year, almost 70 per cent of turnover was accounted for by sales to Europe outside the Republic. It also supplies the Asia Pacific market.[ Kingspan pauses €650m share buyback scheme to ‘preserve dry powder’ for possible dealsOpens in new window ]The company says it currently operates from four facilities in Ireland with plans in place to expand into a state of the art manufacturing facility in the US. Kingspan said the acquisitions has “highly complementary to Advnsys’s existing data-solutions offering”.Advnsys’s advanced building unit services the fast-growing data-centres sector. The division’s sales increased by 34 per cent, “buoyed by tech-sector activity”.Only last Friday, Kingspan chief executive Gene Murtagh told investors that previous plans to spin Advnsys out as a separate listed business in an initial public offering had been shelved.Advnsys is “very much a central part of Kingspan”, he said.He also said Kingspan had headroom of about €1 billion to pursue deals. The group spent some €750 million on acquisitions last year.Responding to a question from an analyst on Friday, Murtagh said the group had “no intention” of using equity to fund future deals though he would not rule it out altogether.Kingspan will initially pay €850 million for BMC, of which €600 million will be cash with €250 million coming from the issue of new shares in Kingspan. There is potential for deferred consideration of up to a further €50 million “contingent on achievement of significant profit targets”. It said the transaction was expected to be completed in the final quarter of this year with BMC’s management staying with the business.“We are delighted to announce this acquisition as part of our stated strategy to evolve our data offering towards fully converged power, cooling and containment solutions,” Murtagh said.BMC Manufacturing’s advanced technology, combined with Advnsys’s deep partnerships with multiple hyperscalers, will mean that we are well-positioned to meet the accelerating global data-centre demand.”Meehan, BMC’s founder and chairman, said: “We have built a strong business with an outstanding team, and this combination provides the ideal platform to accelerate the next phase of our global growth.”