Telstra spends $267.5M on Versent

Telstra is spending $267.5 million on purchasing Melbourne-based consultancy Versent in an effort to help scale its tech services business, Telstra Purple. 

The acquisition also includes Versent’s subsidiary and self-serve cloud management platform, Stax.

Last month, Telstra confirmed that talks were in the process following months of Versent shopping around for potential suitors as sale documents hit the hands of buyout funds. At the tail end of last year, Versent appointed Goldman Sachs to help kick off the process. 

Founded in 2014 by Thor Essman, Eddie Smith and James Coxon, Versent currently has more than 500 employees across offices in Australia, Singapore and the United States. 

It stakes its claim in having delivered more than 1300 projects, migrated or transformed over 1000 cloud workloads, and manages more than 350 million secure identities.

Versent reported $130 million net revenue in FY23 and maintains key partnerships with AWS and Microsoft.

Telstra Enterprise group executive David Burns said the acquisition supports Telstra’s T25 growth strategy and commitment to support digital ambitions of some of the largest industries. 

“Since launching our Telstra Purple technology services business four years ago, we’ve seen growing demand for technology solutions – particularly in cyber security and cloud-led transformation – as enterprises, governments and whole industries continue to digitise their operations,” Burns said.  

“Through the combination of our global partnerships, breadth of our networks and technology, and strength of our deep-domain experts, we have never been better set up to deliver secure, large-scale transformation through technology.

“Versent will bring additional depth to our strong team of experts, help our enterprise customers maximise their investment in cloud-led transformations, and help us meet the growing demand for these specialised services.”

This latest acquisition builds on previous purchases including Alliance Automation and Aqura Technologies, which are bolstering Telstra Purple’s capabilities to support the end-to-end needs of industry verticals and accelerate NAS growth. 

Burns said there was a strong alignment between Telstra and Versent.

“We see strong synergies between Versent and Telstra Purple in our customer base, our strategic partners, our team cultures and the way we tackle customer problems with technology solutions. 

“And like Telstra Purple, Versent also has an international presence, particularly in Southeast Asia, which provides significant potential to grow sales of international and Australia-out digital transformation services,” Burns said. 

“We’re excited by the growth potential this acquisition provides –    it will further differentiate Telstra in the market and bolster our capabilities so that we can be the end-to-end technology partner our customers need now and in the future.”

Telstra’s acquisition follows a period of sustained growth for Versent. 

“Versent was founded on a belief that the way technology services were delivered needed to fundamentally change. One principle has governed all our activity, that success for Versent is solely a function of our customers’ success,” Versent CEO Paul Migliorini said. 

“We’ve used this principle to underpin our focus on investing in engineering depth, craft, innovation and a culture that enables the best engineering talent to thrive. At Versent this mindset is called ‘done done’. We’re pleased to have identified a partner that appreciates and shares our ‘done done’ culture. 

“Versent is known in the market for providing deep, trusted technical expertise with a commitment to customer outcomes through long-term partnership and alongside Telstra Purple we can achieve greater scale with a consistent growth pipeline, particularly expanding our international presence.”

Completion is expected to occur within the next six weeks and is subject to various conditions being met, including certain security holder processes.