Acquisition of Willow Starcom

AIM: KBT

K3 Business Technology Group

("K3" or "the Group")

Acquisition

K3, IT solutions supplier to the retail, manufacturing and distributions sectors, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Willow Starcom Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Access Intelligence Plc, for a total consideration of £1.75 million in cash, to be funded from the Group's existing banking resources. The acquisition, agreed on a debt free/cash free basis, will be earnings enhancing in the first full year of ownership.

Established in 1990 and based in Greater Manchester, Willow Starcom provides remotely managed, on-premise and cloud-hosted IT support solutions together with related hardware, software support and consultancy. It has particular expertise in Microsoft products and is a Microsoft Hosting Partner. Other key areas of expertise are data backup solutions, data storage solutions, remote access solutions and virtualisation. Willow Starcom operates in two data centres in the Manchester area and has a customer base of approximately 240 customers cross a variety of sectors.

For the financial year ended 30 November 2014, the company generated revenue of £2.66 million, EBITDA of £0.37 million and profit before tax of £0.1 million. Net assets at 30 November 2014 stood at £0.9 million.

Willow Starcom is a highly complementary acquisition for K3 and will be readily integrated at limited cost within K3's existing hosting and managed services activities. In particular, it broadens K3's offering in that area, creating additional opportunities for K3 to grow its hosting and managed services revenues.

K3's CEO, David Bolton, said:

"Willow Starcom is a well-established business which generates a high proportion of recurring revenues. It is highly complementary to K3's existing hosting and managed services activities and the business can be very readily integrated. The addition of Willow Starcom will broaden our existing offering within hosting and managed services and brings additional expertise and skills to our team.

We believe that there is significant potential to expand our hosting and managed services activities and this acquisition is part of our strategy to realise that growth opportunity."

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