Texas-based enterprise fiber voice and data provider Logix has been officially acquired by Astra Capital Management, a D.C.-based equity firm co-founded by Grande Communications veteran Matt Murphy. The deal, announced in November, closed this week.
Murphy will take over the newly purchased company as interim CEO and board chairman, while Astra co-founder and Managing Partner Mark Johnson and adviser Kevin Beebe will serve on Logix's board of directors.
Former Logix CEO Matt Asmus and CFO Craig Sheetz are leaving the company as part of the deal.
This marks the first company purchase in Astra's fledgling portfolio. Founded in 2014 by Johnson and Murphy, the firm focuses on smaller investments -- in the millions of dollars rather than billions -- in communications and technology companies that serve other businesses, according to a Washington Post article.
The value of the deal was not disclosed, but the transaction was financed through equity contributions by a number of institutional investors including Wafra Investment Advisory Group, Inc., and DB Private Equity, a division of Deutsche Asset Management. Debt financing was led by Brightwood Capital.
Logix has a solid presence in the Houston area as the city and metro area's largest cloud provider, according to the Houston Business Journal. The provider serves over 2,500 buildings and 11,000 customers in both Texas and Oklahoma. That includes numerous on-net buildings in Houston, particularly multi-tenant office buildings; the average building size is 200,000 square feet.
Johnson and Murphy have ambitious plans to continue growing Logix and put it into a leadership position within the broadband market, with Johnson noting in a release that their initial goal is "to accelerate the business plan and aggressively expand the company's fiber offerings to customers."
Logix faces growing competition for business services in the Houston area from providers like Alpheus, Birch and XO Communications (whose fiber assets are in the process of being acquired by Verizon), as well as incumbent telco AT&T (NYSE: T) and Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), making the city a fertile area for continued growth in this segment.
For more:
- see this release
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