Arkphire secures multimillion euro investment from Bregal Milestone

Irish IT consulting and managed-services firm Arkphire has secured an undisclosed investment from private capital firm Bregal Milestone as it looks to continue to scale the business.

While no sums have been disclosed, London-based Bregal, which closed its inaugural €400 million pan-European investment fund in July, typical invests between €20 million to €60 million in high-growth companies.

Sources indicated that the investment, the first made under the new fund, was at the lower end of the range.

Arkphire, whose partners include EMC, Dell and Cisco, is ranked as one of the fastest-growing companies in Ireland and across Europe with turnover having jumped from €20 million to more than €90 million over the last four years.

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The company forecast in March that it would surpass the €100 million revenue milestone in 2018.

Earlier this year, Arkphire was one of eight Irish companies ranked on the Financial Times' FT100 list which rates the firms across Europe that have achieved the highest percentage growth in revenues between 2013 and 2016. It was listed in the 20 fastest-growing tech businesses in Ireland at the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards last year.

Arkphire, which was advised on the investment by IBI Corporate Finance, said it intends to use the funding to expand in areas such as IT procurement and managed services. The company is looking at a mix of organic growth and M&A deals as it seeks to grow the business further.

Chief executive Paschal Naylor said Arkphire was excited to be working with Bregal Milestone, which he described as "an investor with strong sector experience and a global network of industry contracts."

Bregal Milestone is the debt and growth capital arm of Bregal Investments, a New York-headquartered private equity firm that is backed by the wealthy German-Dutch Brenninkmeijer family. The vehicle is to be used to acquire minority stakes in profitable founder- or family-led businesses. Target sectors for the fund include healthcare, business services, consumer manufacturing and speciality finance.

"Arkphire boasts longstanding relationships with a blue-chip portfolio of global technology customers and enjoys unrivalled reputation as a reliable and customer-focused innovation partner," said Bregal Milestone's managing partner Cyrus Shey, who previously headed Credit Suisse's mid-market direct lending group.

Arkphire, which currently employs more than 90 people and is headquartered in Dublin, with an international office in London, dates back to 1981, when it was known as Memorex Telex. It has had a number of incarnations since then. After a takeover in 1998 it rebranded as EDS Global Services, before becoming AO Systems + Services Ireland when it was acquired by the German-owned IT provider AO Group, in 2006.

The firm returned to Irish ownership in 2009 following a management buyout and relaunched as Arkphire in 2011.