NCS has announced its acquisition of The Dialog Group (Dialog) for A$325 million (S$325 million).
Mr Ng Kuo Pin, CEO of NCS, said, “This acquisition is a significant step in the regionalisation of NCS and leverages the combined strengths of NCS and Dialog and their established track records and reputations across both Singapore and Australia. The scale of this acquisition, our largest to date, reflects our firm commitment to growing our business beyond the shores of Singapore, particularly in Australia where we can also leverage the strategic presence of the Singtel Group.”
Ng added, “At NCS, our purpose is to advance our communities by harnessing technology and bringing people together to make the extraordinary happen. Similarly, Dialog’s commitment to clients and technology has made it one of the leading tech companies in Australia, serving both government and enterprise clients. This alignment of purpose makes Dialog a perfect fit. Collectively, our capabilities, talent and reach will fortify and consolidate our position in Australia and help our clients and the industry meet the digital transformation demands of the future economy.”
This latest deal follows NCS NEXT’s acquisition of two companies last year: Riley, a cloud consultancy with dedicated expertise in Google cloud applications and Eighty20 Solutions, a cloud transformation specialist with unique capabilities across Microsoft cloud platforms, thus offering a ‘best-of-cloud’ service portfolio to the Australian market.
Mr Alan Key, Dialog’s CEO commented, “Together, we will have a strong breadth and depth of capabilities and expertise for our clients here in Australia. Both NCS and Dialog’s talent development cultures and programmes will develop the best talent pipeline and create exciting jobs and growth opportunities.”
According to Gartner, IT spending in Australia is showing its strongest growth in a decade and is projected to grow 6.5% in 2022. The largest IT spending segment in Australia is IT services, which is expected to grow to A$39 billion in 2022.
The completion of the acquisition is subject to fulfilment of closing conditions, including relevant approvals from regulatory authorities and other third parties, and is expected to be completed within three months.