Novo Tellus to be Procurri's largest shareholder with 30% stake

PRIVATE equity firm Novo Tellus will become the largest shareholder of mainboard-listed Procurri, with a 30 per cent stake in the global data centre services firm.

In a regulatory filing on Tuesday morning, Procurri said Novo Tellus and its co-investor ACT Holdings have exercised their call options to purchase about 36.3 million shares, emerging as Procurri's largest shareholder, as they will hold about 29.6 per cent of the issued shares in the company.

The transaction is expected to close on March 21.

In February, Procurri announced that Novo Tellus had inked deals to pick up a combined stake of 29.6 per cent in the Singapore-based firm at S$0.33 a share. The counter closed at S$0.315 apiece on Monday, down 1.6 per cent, or 0.5 Singapore cent.

Novo Tellus will pay Procurri's shareholder DeClout S$12 million for a 12.75 per cent stake in Procurri once its fundraising is completed, and take a board seat on Procurri.

Separately, investment firm ACT Holdings, backed by Novo Tellus founder and non-executive director James Toh, will pay two smaller Procurri shareholders S$15.8 million for a 16.9 per cent stake. The transactions will reduce DeClout's stake in Procurri to 16.9 per cent, from 46.5 per cent in January.

Procurri began as an enterprise hardware trader with a volatile revenue profile, but its investments into IT lifecycle services finally drove revenue and gross profit to a record high last year. It finished 2018 with a net profit of S$5.3 million, from a net loss of S$2.7 million in 2017.

Sean Murphy, Procurri's chairman and global CEO, said the company is pleased to partner Novo Tellus for its next stage of growth, as the private equity firm specialises in making industrial and tech investments in South-east Asia.

Ed Flachbarth, Procurri's global president added: "We have spent the last six years building Procurri's vision of delivering solutions across the IT lifecycle... We now have world-class capabilities in third-party maintenance, strategic asset disposition, hardware resale, and related services... As a Singapore-based company, we are well-positioned to capitalise on the coming wave of data centre and cloud computing spend in Asia."