Singtel's NCS acquires Dialog for $325m

The acquisition is expected to be completed in one month.

The NCSI Holdings Pte. Ltd. (NCS), a subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications Limited, entered into a sale and purchase agreement with Australia’s largest private IT services firm, The Dialog Group (Dialog), for $325m (A$325m).

In a statement, NCS said the acquisition will support the Australian public sector and enterprise clients in addressing their rising digital needs, increase growth opportunities in the Australian market and boost its regionalisation strategy.

With Dialog’s core IT capacities and NCS NEXT digital services, the acquisition will focus on innovation, cloud, artificial intelligence, and data analytics. Under the acquisition, the count of IT specialists in its Australian operations, who will support sectors including government, healthcare, transport, communications, financial and commercial service, will increase to 1,300. 

NCS said the completion of the acquisition is subject to fulfilment of closing conditions and is expected to be finished within one month. 

The latest agreement comes after NCS NEXT’s acquisition of technology firm, Riley, which is a cloud consultancy with expertise in Google cloud applications, and Eighty20 Solutions, which is a cloud transformation specialist with capabilities in Microsoft cloud platforms.

According to US-based technological research firm, Gartner, IT spending in Australia is showing its strongest growth in a decade and is also expected to grow by 6.5% this year. The largest IT spending segment in Australia is IT services, specifically consulting services, which is projected to grow to $39b (A$39b) in 2022, added Gartner.

$1 = A$1