Inflexion completes investment in ProLabs

Inflexion Private Equity today announces that funds managed by Inflexion have completed an investment in ProLabs, a leading independent supplier of compatible optical transceivers. Critical in the functioning of global data networks, transceivers are used by home broadband service providers through to hyper scale data centres.

Principally serving blue-chip telecoms and financial services businesses in the U.S., Europe and Asia, Prolabs has grown profits at over 25% annually. The global transceiver market is expanding rapidly as accelerating demand for voice and data services drives the roll-out of faster and higher capacity networks. Supported by significant infrastructure investment, the market for these devices was estimated to be worth over $6bn last year and is forecast to grow at 10% per annum. Founded in 2004, ProLabs was carved-out of a leading European IT distributor in 2013.

Inflexion is backing the highly experienced management team to support an acceleration in international expansion and target selected acquisitions. This investment adds to Inflexion’s TMT experience; recent investments include My Policy, K2 Partnering Solutions, Outdoor Plus and Group IMD.

Tim Smallbone, Head of Enterprise, Inflexion, commented: “We are delighted to back Ward Williams and his talented management team. ProLabs has a great platform from which to support transformative growth. Inflexion’s sector expertise and international reach, with in-country experts in Asia and South America, made us a natural partner. It’s been a period of momentum at Inflexion, meeting tenacious management teams and recognising their vision for growth; this investment represents our tenth in under a year. We look forward to a prosperous future with ProLabs.”

Ward Williams, Chief Executive Officer, ProLabs, commented: “Having the right partner to help deliver our ambition of being the global leader in our market will be critical. With Inflexion, we believe we have found that partner. From our first meeting, the team have demonstrated deep commercial interest and understanding and this combined with their intellectual inquisitiveness means that they really understand our business, the market and our competitive landscape. I am really looking forward to working with them closely over the coming years”.

The Inflexion deal team comprised of Jonathan Ma, Abhishek Majumdar and Richard Wootten; Jonathan and Abhishek will join the board on completion alongside Ward Williams as CEO, Caroline Green as COO and Stewart Holness as Executive Chairman.