Softcat has agreed to acquire US infrastructure provider GDT for an enterprise value of $1.05 billion, giving the UK technology group a considerably larger American operation across networking, data centres, cloud, cybersecurity, and AI infrastructure.

The £785 million transaction will be funded through a mixture of existing cash, new borrowing, and an equity issue expected to raise gross proceeds of approximately £350 million. Softcat expects the acquisition to close by the end of the first quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory filings and other customary approvals.

Dallas-headquartered GDT is a multi-vendor IT solutions provider serving enterprise customers across networking, hybrid cloud and data centres, cybersecurity, and collaboration. Softcat says the deal responds to growing demand from customers that want the UK group to support their operations internationally, particularly in the United States.

The acquisition is large enough to alter Softcat’s capital structure as well as its geographic reach. The company expects net debt leverage of about 1.3 times at completion, compared with an estimated net cash position at the end of its 2026 financial year, and intends to bring leverage below one times by July 2028.

US capability is becoming part of UK IT contracts

Softcat has built its business around supplying technology and services across workplace systems, cloud, networking, security, data, and automation. As larger customers operate across several countries, however, the ability to sell and support infrastructure in only the home market becomes a constraint even when the technical proposition remains strong.

Customers buying data-centre, networking, cloud, or security technology often want common vendor relationships, commercial terms, architecture, and support across international estates. That is particularly relevant to organisations rationalising infrastructure after acquisitions or building AI systems that depend on combinations of data-centre capacity, networking, storage, accelerators, and security controls.

Softcat has been building North American capability organically, but the GDT acquisition accelerates the process by adding an established US organisation rather than gradually reproducing sales, engineering, vendor, and service operations from the ground up. The attraction is not simply access to another customer list; GDT brings local delivery capacity and technical relationships in infrastructure categories where Softcat already operates.

The enlarged group will nevertheless have to demonstrate that overlapping capabilities turn into useful cross-selling rather than duplication. Integrating two multi-vendor technology businesses means aligning account ownership, supplier agreements, service processes, technical teams, incentives, systems, and reporting without disrupting customers that may already have long-standing relationships with one side.

AI infrastructure adds urgency to data-centre services

Softcat specifically identifies networking, data centres, AI infrastructure, and cybersecurity among the capabilities strengthened by the acquisition, placing GDT inside a market being reshaped by the infrastructure demands of enterprise AI.

AI workloads have brought renewed attention to physical infrastructure because accelerators alone do not create a usable computing platform. High-density systems need power, cooling, storage, fast networking, orchestration, security, and integration with existing enterprise environments, while many organisations are trying to determine what belongs in public cloud services, hosted capacity, colocation facilities, or their own infrastructure.

That complexity creates work for integrators able to assemble technology from several vendors and support it after deployment. It also raises the competitive stakes because hyperscale cloud providers, hardware manufacturers, specialist AI-infrastructure companies, telecom operators, and established IT-services groups are all pursuing parts of the same expenditure.

GDT’s US footprint gives Softcat exposure to a much larger technology market, but size alone will not guarantee returns from that spending. Infrastructure projects can involve large gross transaction values while leaving considerably smaller gross profit after hardware and third-party products are paid for, making service mix and technical capability important to the economics.

The deal brings a sizeable financing commitment

Softcat expects GDT to generate about $240 million of gross profit for the twelve months ending December 2026, representing roughly 30% year-on-year growth, and approximately $80 million of EBITDA on a US GAAP basis. Softcat also expects the acquisition to deliver high-single-digit to low-double-digit underlying earnings-per-share accretion in the first full financial year after completion.

Those figures are management forecasts rather than completed results, and the transaction introduces debt into a group that expects to finish its current financial year with net cash. Softcat has arranged facilities including a £100 million term loan and a £450 million revolving credit facility while setting a new target leverage range of 0.5 to one times.

The company is also asking shareholders to provide a meaningful part of the acquisition funding. Its approximately £350 million equity raise includes an institutional placing alongside an offer to retail investors, reducing the amount that has to be borrowed but increasing the number of shares across which future earnings are distributed.

GDT’s historical accounts provide another reason to look beyond headline transaction value. Softcat’s announcement records attributable net income of negative $58.4 million for 2025, although it notes that the figure includes amortisation and interest expenses associated with GDT’s existing capital structure. The buyer is therefore presenting EBITDA, gross-profit growth, prospective synergies, and refinancing as more useful indicators of the business it expects to own.

Softcat also upgraded its current-year trading expectations alongside the acquisition announcement, forecasting high-teens growth in underlying operating profit for FY2026 compared with previous expectations for mid-teens growth. That gives it a stronger operating backdrop for a transaction that is much larger than a routine bolt-on.

The acquisition is scheduled to close only after regulatory approvals, leaving integration work to run well beyond today’s financing. By buying GDT, Softcat is exchanging part of its relatively conservative balance sheet for immediate US scale in infrastructure markets receiving new investment from AI and data-centre demand; whether that produces the expected returns will depend on how effectively the two businesses can sell and deliver as one organisation.