Business Growth Fund has invested £2.5m in Sub10 Systems (Sub10), a specialist designer, developer and vendor of class-leading millimeter wave wireless solutions for mobile telecoms.
The business has grown rapidly since its formation in 2010 and is forecast to deliver FY14 revenues of c.£10m. The company’s head office is in Newton Abbot, Devon, and it currently employs 37 people.
Sub10’s products are high speed wireless devices for data transfer across mobile networks where historically data transfer has been slow and unreliable. The company’s customers are primarily telecommunications companies and network operators. Due to the growth in mobile data traffic, many operators are using wireless to save on radio spectrum usage and thereby increase efficiency. This can be achieved by using products such as Sub10’s wireless links where plenty of data spectrum is available for relatively short, high speed, point-to-point data connections. This is ideal for densely packed communications networks such as urban areas and Sub10’s products will help to improve the performance of mobile networks.
Stuart Broome, founder and CEO of Sub10, commented: “The Business Growth Fund offers Sub10 real growth potential. BGF’s investment will allow us to further develop our range of wireless products in line with customers’ demands whilst also funding an increase in our sales and marketing efforts to target larger customers and orders. Having spent time with the BGF team we feel confident that they are the right fit for us and look forward to an extremely bright future together.”
“BGF’s long-term equity finance is well-suited to technology companies’ investment plans, especially where the company is growing like Sub10 and where the business case often works best over extended time periods. We are delighted to be investing and are also very pleased to be backing such an ambitious team and an innovative South West business. We hope this is the first of many such companies from this region that BGF invests in.” added Ned Dorbin, Senior Investment Manager, BGF.
Other corporate advisors to the transaction included New News Legal (Sub10 Legal), Foot Anstey (BGF Legal) and Francis Clark (BGF Financial DD). Lloyds Commercial Finance provided working capital facilities to Sub10.
