Infrastructure manager DIF Capital Partners has participated in a €250m funding round to support Valoo’s Finnish fibre network rollout plan.
DIF, which is leading the debt and equity funding round, said it is making the equity investment on behalf of Core-plus Infrastructure Fund III (CIF III), a fund that targets mid-sized, core-plus infrastructure companies mainly in Europe and North America.
Other institutions participating in Valoo’s funding round include Tesi and other investors. Senior debt has been provided by a banking group comprising SEB, NORD/LB and NIBC.
DIF said the funding will allow delivery of high-speed fibre connectivity to areas that to date have had to rely mainly on mobile connectivity for internet access. The package will bring fibre to over 300,000 households.
The funding is a follow-up to the initial investment made by DIF’s CIF I fund which supported the first part of the growth trajectory of the company.
Back in 2019, DIF teamed up with Finnish telecom infrastructure provider Cinia to build fibre optic networks in Finland. At the time, DIF, through CIF I, said it will hold an 80.1% stake in the joint venture, known as Adola (now known as Valoo), which plans to provide more than 100,000 fibre-to-the-home connections. The remaining 19.9% stake was held by Cinia.
Willem Jansonius, partner and head of CIF investments at DIF Capital Partners, said: ”Our follow-up investment in Valoo enables it to connect a much larger number of underserved areas in Finland to fibre broadband infrastructure.”
Jansonius added that DIF’s investment in Valoo further ”underscores our position as a major investor in the Finnish market and our continued focus on digital infrastructure across Europe and North America”.
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