Additional funding to drive target of 10,000 rural homes and businesses served by year-end.

July 4, 2014

2 Min Read

OXFORDSHIRE -- Gigaclear (the “Company”), the UK’s leading provider of fibre networks to rural communities, is pleased to confirm the successful completion of a new round of equity financing. The funds, totalling £7.75m have been raised from both new and existing private investors in addition to Gigaclear’s first institutional investor: the CF Woodford Equity Income Fund, managed by high-profile fund manager Neil Woodford.

Gigaclear is a provider of ultrafast pure fibre broadband, focused solely on bringing high-quality, dependable broadband connectivity to the UK’s rural communities. Offering speeds up to a symmetric 1Gbps (1000Mbps), Gigaclear currently owns and operates eight rural fibre networks across Oxfordshire and Rutland. The Company has the ambition to own and operate 25 networks by the end of the year, of which six more are already under construction in Kent and Oxfordshire. Gigaclear has recently announced plans to construct further superfast networks across Peterborough and Northamptonshire.

Gigaclear is already part way through the construction of new networks in Oxfordshire and Kent which, once complete, will mean 5,000 rural homes and businesses across Britain will be benefitting from ultrafast broadband: many of which were unable to receive broadband of any kind before Gigaclear’s arrival in their village or town. The additional £7.75m funding confirmed today will enable Gigaclear to commence the roll-out of several additional new networks, increasing its market lead and bringing the target of serving 10,000 homes and businesses by the year end ever closer. Today’s funding has been secured from both new and existing shareholders via two separate funding rounds. The Company first raised over £2.75m in April this year via an Enterprise Investment Scheme (“EIS”), raising more than double its original minimum target.

Shortly after the close of this EIS round, the company agreed in May to an additional investment of £5.0m from the CF Woodford Equity Income Fund, managed by high-profile fund manager Neil Woodford, which was launched on 19 June. Taken together, these two funding rounds transform Gigaclear from a firm backed solely by a small number of private individuals in to one backed by over 70 committed private and institutional shareholders.

Gigaclear

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