Press Release
London-based business internet and telecoms provider, Spitfire, has secured a debt facility from HSBC UK, enabling an existing major shareholder to retain ownership of the company and develop a platform for the business to achieve future organic growth.
The company, which focuses on the ongoing supply of network services such as telephone lines, internet access and IP engineering, has been a customer of HSBC UK for more than 20 years.
During that time, HSBC UK has continued to support the day-to-day banking and working capital of Spitfire as it has grown from a company in 1995 with 25 employees and a £2.5 million turnover, into one today with 100 staff members and a turnover of £26 million.
Harry Bowlby, Managing Director of Spitfire, said:
“HSBC UK has supported us through many changes to our business. The facilities it has provided us with have been instrumental in our organic growth and, with this extra support, we will be able to carry on growing in the best way possible.”
The company plans to leverage its existing assets, excellent customer service, engineering knowledge and continuous innovation to achieve further organic growth over the next ten years.
Martin Dakin, Deputy Area Director in HSBC UK’s London Corporate Banking team, said:
“Spitfire has been a long-standing customer of HSBC UK and we have grown to have a strong relationship with the company during this time. We look forward to seeing the team use this debt facility to continue its expansion.”
Spitfire is one of the largest independently owned and managed businesses in the UK telecommunications industry with a client portfolio of 6,000 business customers. It is unusual for a telecommunications service provider, having its own core network with wholesale voice and data interconnects to major carriers and data exchanges including Openreach, BT Wholesale, Cogent, Century Link, Talk Talk Business, COLT, Virgin and LINX.
The company has been a leading innovator in the telecommunications industry with the early adoption of: DSL for internet access in 2000; wholesale line rental of telephone lines from Openreach in 2001; SIP trunks and SDSL for voice over IP in 2007 and BTW Aggregated Ethernet in 2009. The company launched its own hosted PBX telephone system in 2018 and is currently developing a range of mobile data products for launch in 2020.
The deal was part of HSBC UK’s £14 billion lending fund to support SMEs in the UK, with £2.2 billion committed to businesses in London.
