Logix Fiber Networks is looking to ramp its carrier and wholesale businesses with $100 million in fresh funding, as the company strives to return to growth following an erosion of its business during the Covid-19 pandemic. While a residential play isn’t on its radar yet, CEO Craig Collins didn’t rule it out.
Collins told Fierce the Texas-based company already has more than 7,000 route miles of fiber in the state, with more than 300,000 miles of fiber connecting the key cities of Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Houston. In addition to continuing to expand its footprint and enhance its network capabilities, Collins said Logix will use the funding from Astra Capital Management and O’Connor Capital Solutions to refinance and restructure some of its existing debt. Together, he said these moves will allow Logix to enter its next phase of growth.
Specifically, Collins said network improvements will be aimed at ensuring the company is able to meet demand from wireless carriers for 10-gig fiber services. It will also seek to boost redundancy across the board and build out to customers who are near net today.
The focus on serving wireless carriers stems from Logix’s acquisition of Alpheus Communications in 2018. While Alpheus’ carrier business was largely dormant when the deal was completed, Collins said he has spent the last two years working to breathe new life into the unit and take advantage of natural momentum in the market as 5G rollouts progress.
Logix now has established relationships with more than 100 carrier customers. Its roster includes wireless providers as well as clients like Lumen Technologies, Zayo and more. The company is also starting to deal “directly with hyperscalers like Facebook” and is letting residential broadband providers like Ezee Fiber tap into its network to speed their fiber-to-the-home deployments.
“What’s happened over the last two and a half years is everyone kind of has experienced some revenue erosion due to Covid, especially if you’re just B2B, that was unexpected. We have now stopped that erosion and my expectation through that strategy that I laid out is to now start growing the top line of the business,” Collins said.
While its plans don’t currently include an expansion into the residential fiber-to-the-home market, Collins said he’s weighing his options, especially in light of the billions in government funding coming down the pipeline.
“That evaluation is ongoing. There’s never a shortage of people who reach out to me who want to do something which is called overbuild,” he said. “Now that I’ve also seen this $45 billion in funding come out it’s also kind of accelerated my thought process on how we may take advantage of something like that. So, there are ongoing conversations around looking at that market.”
But with the fresh capital investment in hand, he said his short-term focus is on being “very disciplined” in how it executes on its existing enterprise and wholesale strategy.