Oakley Capital invests in German broadband open access platform vitroconnect

Oakley Capital, the leading pan-European, mid-market private equity investor, is pleased to announce that Oakley Capital Origin II has agreed its first investment, acquiring a majority stake in vitroconnect, one of the leading broadband open access platforms in Germany. Oakley is investing alongside founder and CEO Dirk Pasternack and his management team who will continue to run the business. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to complete around the end of H1 2024.

Based in Gütersloh, Germany, vitroconnect connects broadband providers with resellers through a proprietary, single interface software platform. The company works with most of Germany’s leading telco players, offering process automation, network operations, brokerage and white-label services through its Carrier Aggregation Platform (‘CAP’).

This unique offering has allowed the company to steadily expand its customer base of network operators and resellers, with minimal customer churn, strong net retention and a high share of recurring revenues contributing to consistent and profitable double-digit growth over the last three years.

As a key enabler of wholesale activities in the highly fragmented and technologically heterogeneous German broadband marketplace, vitroconnect is poised to benefit from the significant proliferation of fibre to the home (‘FTTH’) technology as Germany catches up with European peers.

Germany currently has one of the lowest rates of homes connected to fibre broadband. This is attracting significant investment in fibre technology which will underpin future market growth with the number of connected homes expected to grow from three million today to 29 million by 2029 and 39 million by 2035.