Vantage Capital, Africa’s largest mezzanine debt fund manager, has announced that it has fully exited its investment in Vumatel, the largest fibre-to-the-home network provider in South Africa
The company was established in October 2014 by Niel Schoeman and Johan Pretorius, industry veterans who had previously started up the Birchman Group and Conduct Telecom before creating Vumatel.
Vumatel started out its life rolling out South Africa’s first fibre optic network to homes in Parkhurst by partnering with internet service providers who provided connectivity to their residential customers while Vumatel remained the owner and operator of the infrastructure.
At the time of Vantage’s investment in 2016, Vumatel had deployed its open-access fibre optic network across fourteen suburbs in Johannesburg, passing 16,000 homes and had secured around 4,000 subscribers. It had also received an equity investment from Investec Equity Partners.
Luc Albinski, co-managing partner at Vantage Capital, said, “Vumatel is one of our many success stories, where we have supported businesses with mezzanine debt to achieve their growth ambitions. In this investment, we saw the opportunity to partner with an exceptional management team in a fast-growing sector and we are proud of the role Vantage played in unlocking the exceptional growth that Vumatel has since delivered.”
Warren van der Merwe, co-managing partner at Vantage Capital, commented, “The Vumatel investment is an excellent case study of how mezzanine debt can unlock growth opportunities where banks remain risk-averse. In this way, Vantage plays an important role in supporting mid-size corporates before they are sufficiently established to fully fund their operations and growth ambitions with bank debt.”
Hugo van den Heever, associate partner at Vantage Capital, said, “We have focused a lot of attention on the technology infrastructure sector with its high growth potential. In line with our pan-African mandate, we have looked at opportunities across the continent including markets such as Nigeria, the East African Community and Egypt. We hope to be able to announce further investments in this sector shortly.”
