Accumuli Boxing clever with £7.5m IT deal

IT business Boxing Orange, based in Garforth, near Leeds, has been bought in a £7.5m cash and shares deal by IT security firm Accumuli.

The purchase of the West Yorkshire company, which specialises in security products and managed security services, includes its wholly-owned subsidiaries Webscreen Systems and Boxing Orange MSS.

It sees Accumuli paying £2.7m in cash and issuing 31m shares at 8.75p; a further £2.1m will be paid in cash if the company hits targets.

Established 10 years ago, Boxing Orange had earnings before interest, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of £714,000 and pre-tax profit of £521,000 on sales of £3.5m in the year to March 2010.

A company spokesman said: “It has established a reputation as one of the largest and most innovative managed security service providers in the UK, working with clients in central and local government, gaming, insurance, financial services, retail, manufacturing and telecoms.”

The company employs 24 staff, excluding directors, who will all remain with the busi- ness.

Boxing Orange advises and educates clients about IT security risks and how to deal with them.

The company has a 24-hour security operations centre.

The vendors were advised by a Yorkshire team of advisers including Christian Hunt of law firm Clarion and John Holroyd of Mazars, who are both based in Leeds.

Graham Norfolk, Accumuli’s chairman, said: “We are delighted to announce the third acquisition in our stated strategy of building a managed IT security services business.

“Boxing Orange provides the company with an established, profitable, managed service capability with significant opportunities to cross-sell complementary services across the company’s customer base.

“We look forward in the near future to providing further updates upon our acquisition strat- egy.”

It is Salford-based Accumuli’s third acquisition since November, having bought a telecoms firm, Tuscany Networks, which is based in Hampshire, for £4m, and Berkshire-based specialist security systems integrator Fujin Group for £2m.