Oakley Capital (“Oakley”), a leading pan-European, mid-market private equity investor, is pleased to announce that Oakley Capital Origin Fund I (“Origin” or “the Fund”) has agreed to acquire a stake in Webcentral DEH (“Webcentral”), a leading Australian domains, hosting and e-mail provider, in a carve-out from its parent, Webcentral Limited, an Australia-based digital solutions company listed on the Australia Securities Exchange (ASX).
Founded in 1996 as one of Australia’s first domain and hosting providers, Webcentral offers an extensive portfolio of digital services to over 330,000 small and medium businesses and 2,500 enterprises across Australia and New Zealand. The company is growing profitably with high cash conversion rates as more SMEs seek to digitise their business models.
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Oakley is investing in Webcentral in partnership with veteran hosting entrepreneurs Jochen Berger and Tom Strohe, marking the latest in a series of successful collaborations in this space, including Intergenia, HEG, WebPros and Contabo.
The investment reflects Oakley’s ability to leverage its network of entrepreneurs, its sector focus and buy-and-build track record to unearth attractive investment opportunities.
Oakley and its partners will apply their extensive experience scaling SaaS and hosting companies across Europe to help Webcentral unlock opportunities in a fragmented, international hosting market that continues to grow, as global demand for cloud infrastructure solutions accelerates.
We look forward to working alongside Joe and his management team to further develop Webcentral into a leading hosting business and accelerate its growth. We also welcome the opportunity to achieve this in partnership with our long-term partners Tom Strohe and Jochen Berger, proven leaders in the webhosting space who we have been fortunate enough to collaborate with over the last 10 years.
Peter Dubens
Founder and Managing Partner — Oakley Capital
Oakley and their partners combine a deep understanding of the domains and hosting sector with a proven value creation playbook. In partnership with Tom and Jochen, the Oakley team is uniquely positioned to support the next stage of Webcentral’s growth, enabling us to expand our capabilities, further improve our services to clients, and pursue new growth opportunities.
Joe Demase
Managing Director — Webcentral
