Nasstar buys VESK Group for GBP7.8m

Nasstar, a provider of hosted managed and cloud computing services, announced the acquisition of the business and assets of VESK Group for £7.81m in cash and shares.

The £6.38m cash consideration will be funded funded from the company's existing bank and new facilities put in place for the purpose of the acquisition, and £1.42m by the issue of 18.43m new shares at 7.77p each.

VESK, which is pure-play hosted desktop provider, comprises three separate legal entities under common ownership. Unaudited consolidated management accounts of the group for the year ended 31 May 2015 reported turnover of £2.5m, pre-tax profit of £0.6m, and net assets of £0.8m.

Nasstar said the acquisition was consistent with its stated expansion strategy of organic growth augmented by selective acquisitions where the company can add intellectual property, technical expertise and sector knowledge.

Chief executive officer Nigel Redwood said: “Quality experienced technical resource is hard to come by in our industry and this acquisition brings us an additional skilled team of 20, further adding to our local resource pool in London.

"VESK also has an established customer base and brand within the legal sector and therefore this acquisition also ticks a number of the strategic aims that we set ourselves in our acquisition strategy.”

At 1100 BST, Nasstar shares were down 1.5% at 8.25p.