ETel Group, the telecom company founded by Dublin entrepreneur Seán Melly, has agreed to buy Austria's largest corporate internet service provider for €30 million to step up expansion in central Europe.
The acquisition of EUNet Internet Services is ETel's 11th purchase in its five markets of Austria, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
The Dublin-based company may fund further acquisitions in existing markets by selling shares and listing them on London's Alternative Investment Market, Mr Melly said.
"Given ETel's scale and profitability now, we've been told that we are a good candidate for an IPO," the entrepreneur said in a phone interview from Vienna. "I would expect to re-examine the possibility of an IPO this year."
Mr Melly, who's also vice chairman of ETel, also said the telecoms company has an "interest" in buying Austria's Tele.Ring if its acquisition by Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile falls through.
The European Commission extended the period of its probe into the transaction earlier this month amid concern about the extent of Deutsche Telekom's potential control of the Austrian mobile market.
ETel's purchase of EUNet will give the Irish company an extra 40,000 corporate customers in Austria, where it already has about 30,000 clients, and additional revenue of about €27 million.
"We have a network in Austria and EUNet has a leased network, so in its simplest form, the acquisition could lead to EUNet getting rid of its network and moving traffic onto our network," Mr Melly said.
"There are tremendous synergies in putting together competing telecom businesses."
ETel, which posted its first pretax profit last year, expects to generate profit of €10 million on revenue of €135 million in the 12 months following the acquisition of EUNet.
Founded in 1999, the Irish provider of voice, data and internet services for large companies has capitalised on deregulation of the telecommunications industry in central Europe and eastward expansion of the European Union through a series of acquisitions in these countries.
