{"id":337890,"date":"2020-02-10T11:13:12","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T09:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=337890"},"modified":"2020-02-10T12:52:45","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T10:52:45","slug":"webafrica-sale-here-is-how-much-money-the-company-wants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business-telecoms\/337890-webafrica-sale-here-is-how-much-money-the-company-wants.html","title":{"rendered":"Webafrica sale – Here is how much money the company wants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Webafrica was put up for sale in 2019<\/strong><\/a> with the help of Standard Bank, but to date, the company has not received an offer which it was willing to accept.<\/p>\n

Webafrica, which was founded in 1997 by Matthew Tagg as a web hosting company, is one of South Africa\u2019s largest Internet service providers (ISPs) with around 60,000 customers.<\/p>\n

Its most valuable asset is its 35,000 fibre customers which have piqued the interest of many South African ISPs.<\/p>\n

Its DSL and fixed-LTE customer base are seen as less valuable because of the high churn rate of LTE subscribers and the fact that DSL is being discontinued.<\/p>\n

With all ISPs trying to rapidly grow their subscriber base to benefit from cost savings and economies of scale, most of South Africa\u2019s large players were keen to make a deal with Webafrica.<\/p>\n

There was, however, a big difference in the price which these ISPs were willing to pay and how much Webafrica is looking for.<\/p>\n

Most of the ISPs valued Webafrica between R170 million and R220 million, but the company would not sell for anything less than R300 million.<\/p>\n

Webafrica becoming profitable<\/h3>\n

When Webafrica started to look for potential buyers last year the company was losing money \u2013 it has been struggling to turn a profit for a long time.<\/p>\n

This, however, changed after Webafrica migrated from Internet Solutions<\/strong><\/a> to its own infrastructure provider in partnership with a number of parties, including Echo Service Provider.<\/p>\n

This move significantly reduced Webafrica\u2019s network cost which helped the company to become profitable.<\/p>\n

While this profit is not even close to justifying a valuation of R300 million, it shows that the company is on the right track.<\/p>\n

This may be one of the biggest reasons why Webafrica CEO Tim Wyatt-Gunning is able to stick to his R300 million asking price and not entertain lower offers.<\/p>\n

Focus remains on growing the company<\/h3>\n

Wyatt-Gunning previously told MyBroadband that Webafrica has not been sold and that \u201cthe owners of Webafrica remain the same in all aspects\u201d.<\/p>\n

All industry feedback points to the fact that this is still the case, and Wyatt-Gunning told MyBroadband this month that he has no comment on the company\u2019s valuation or financial position.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue to focus on the rapid exciting growth of our business,\u201d he told MyBroadband last year when the sale became public knowledge.<\/p>\n

Industry speculation suggests that there is still some interest in the ISP, but the selling price of R300 million remains a big hurdle.<\/p>\n

Now read: Webafrica for sale<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Webafrica remains for sale after its CEO Tim Wyatt-Gunning declined offers from various companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41906],"tags":[35,1423,3542,2508],"class_list":["post-337890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-telecoms","tag-headline","tag-matthew-tagg","tag-tim-wyatt-gunning","tag-webafrica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337890"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338132,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337890\/revisions\/338132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}