Lenders extend €1.1bn for team.blue, more than twice what it sought

team.blue, the Ghent-based group behind small-business web brands including Names.co.uk, LCN and TransIP, said on 23 October that it had moved €1.1bn (£921m) of its debt from September 2029 to July 2032. The deal priced on 22 October. The company had gone to lenders looking to extend €500m (£419m), and demand let it upsize the deal twice.

The extension covers most of the group’s €1.35bn (£1.13bn) term loan B, a loan sold to institutional investors rather than held by a bank. After the deal, about 90% of team.blue’s term debt falls due in 2032. The refinanced loan is priced at Euribor plus 4.25 percentage points, with a 0% floor, and was issued at 98.5% of face value. team.blue says it is the largest euro-denominated term loan for a software company in the past 12 months.

Jonathan Thackray, chief financial officer of team.blue and formerly CFO of TalkTalk, said the company had set out to extend €500m and that “the depth of support from our institutional investor base allowed us to go much further”. He said the deal “gives us the flexibility to keep innovating and investing in the digital and AI-enabled tools our customers rely on”.

For the more than 3.5 million small and medium-sized businesses that buy domains, hosting, email and software from team.blue’s brands, the refinancing settles how their supplier is funded until 2032. It moves €1.1bn of debt due in September 2029, less than three years into a new chief executive’s tenure, out to July 2032, and it keeps a buy-and-build model running on borrowed money that both rating agencies still grade below investment grade.

Bought brands, funded by debt

team.blue was formed in 2019, when Combell, TransIP and Register Group combined following investment from Hg. Its brand directory now lists more than 60 brands, and the group says it serves customers in 24 countries. Acquisitions have contributed around €300m (£251m) in acquired revenue since 2020, according to the company.

The buying has continued into 2026. team.blue added Macaly, a Czech AI website and app builder, in December 2025 and Windsor.ai, a marketing data integration platform, in January 2026. Its influencer marketing brand Kolsquare bought Storyclash the same month, and the group bought Saleskit, a B2B sales tool, in March.

Those purchases sit on top of the group’s older domain and hosting business. In its review of 2025, team.blue reported €866m (£725m) in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and 11% organic revenue growth. Domains, hosting, email and infrastructure served around 2.7 million customers and produced 73% of revenue. The software brands – website builders, cookie consent and compliance tools, online stores, social media management, invoicing and booking – served about 600,000 customers and produced the other 27%.

The 4.25-point margin alone on €1.1bn comes to about €47m (£39m) a year before Euribor is added. Moody’s rates the group B3 and S&P rates it B, both with stable outlooks. The company points to “continued double-digit revenue growth and strong cash generation supporting its deleveraging trajectory”.

A runway for the next chief executive

The refinancing lands between two chief executives. Ido Erlichman joined as deputy CEO on 7 September and takes over on 1 January 2027 from Claudio Corbetta, who ran Register.it from 2000, became team.blue’s chief executive in 2022 and moves to deputy chair. Erlichman was previously chief executive of Kape Technologies, a London-listed digital security business sold in 2023, and has been a strategic advisor to team.blue’s software division since 2024.

When the appointment was announced on 3 September, executive chair Dawn Marriott cited Erlichman’s “track record in disciplined M&A and platform building”. With about 90% of the term debt now due in July 2032, most of the group’s term borrowing falls due five and a half years after he takes over rather than in his third year.

What changes for the brands’ customers

A customer of Names.co.uk, LCN, Simply Hosting or Shoptet deals with a local brand, but that brand sits inside a group that is still assembling its product range by acquisition and is now wiring the pieces together. On 20 October team.blue said brands including Metricool, Kolsquare, Shoptet, SimplyBook.me and iubenda had launched connectors that let customers use their software from inside AI assistants. Its 2025 review said AI-enabled products accounted for around half of new customer ARR by December 2025, and that a layer called blue.hub is designed to give customers a single login across the group’s brands.

The release says nothing about prices, contract terms or products. team.blue’s lenders have agreed to fund the current model – buy software built for small businesses, keep the founders, connect the products to a base of millions of domain and hosting customers – until 2032 rather than 2029.

The extension gives team.blue until July 2032 to show that the brands it bought, joined up through blue.hub and the AI connectors, can pay down debt that costs 4.25 points over Euribor. Until then, the more than 3.5 million businesses on those brands buy from a group that its lenders still price as a B-rated borrower.