Aussie Broadband sells remaining Superloop shares

Aussie Broadband has sold off its remaining ownership in Superloop, four months after winning court clearance to hold a bigger stake in the business.

The ASX-listed fibre builder announced it had offloaded its 11.99 percent stake in Superloop for $99.8 million [pdf], a gain of $42.7 million.

Aussie Broadband said it will now focus on growing its internet brand Buddy Telco and integrating Symbio, which it acquired for $262 million in February, as well as its wholesale fibre business.

“Aussie continues to explore acquisitions in the ordinary course with a disciplined approach, having regard to our strong organic growth,” the company said in an ASX statement.

Touted as a “digital-first challenger” brand, Buddy Telco offers fibre connectivity via the NBN and Aussie Broadband’s own network.

Meanwhile, Symbio, a unified communications-as-a-service provider, is said to provide Aussie Broadband with a “compelling breadth of services and strengthened customer proposition”, covering “data, voice and messaging services”.

On a wholesale front, Aussie Broadband recently announced it had it won a number of enterprise deals, including with Bunnings Warehouse, Hitachi Construction, Austin Health and Mercy Health, Grill’d and petroleum company United.

In February, Aussie Broadband made a play for Superloop by buying 19.9 percent of shares in the provider. 

Shortly after, Superloop directed Aussie Broadband to reduce its interest in the company back to 12 percent, because owning anything larger requires approval from the Singaporean telecommunications regulator, the Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA).

On March 19, Aussie Broadband sought an injunction to allow it to keep the full 19.9 percent stake, but that was dismissed by the Federal Court in April.

Left with no other option, Aussie Broadband sold nearly 38 million Superloop shares at $1.31 per share.

A month later, the company received Singaporean regulatory approval to hold the bigger stake.