Telecoms group TalkTalk has agreed to sell its direct B2B business to The Daisy Group for £175m.
The proposed deal would involve transferring all existing TalkTalk direct B2B customers to Daisy, an independent provider of end-to-end technology, communications and cloud solutions with revenues of around £700m and 3,700 employees across the UK.
The deal includes around 80,000 SoHo, SME and large enterprise clients, and represents less than 20 per cent of TalkTalk’s B2B revenues.
The transaction is subject to contract with the intention to complete in late July 2018. Daisy has been granted a period of exclusivity to conclude the deal.
“Last year we set out a strategy to radically simplify the business, focussing on fewer priorities that offer the best growth potential,” said TalkTalk’s chief executive Tristia Harrison.
Daisy is an existing strategic partner of TalkTalk, meaning all customers would continue to be served by the TalkTalk network.
The group would retain and continue to grow its core strategic partner and wholesale business, offering services through over 800 channel relationships.
Harrison added: “TalkTalk has real strength in the Partner and Wholesale markets, where we have scale and a clear leadership position. It represents the vast majority of our revenue and profit and we see real opportunity to continue growing at pace.
“This proposed deal would allow us to focus on growth in those core B2B markets, whilst also removing significant complexity and cost from the business.”
The £175m deal was announced alongside TalkTalk’s financial results for the year to 31 March 2018. The group grew its customer base by 192,000 during the 12-month period but statutory revenue fell by 4 per cent to approximately £1.71 billion.
Last month, it emerged that TalkTalk had once again topped the list for the most complained-about broadband providers in the UK.
According to telecoms regulator Ofcom, the main reason for the complaints about the company was faults and other problems with its services.
For every 100,000 TalkTalk customers, about 31 users made a complaint to Ofcom.