Done deal: Manny Medina’s Cyxtera (CYXT) to start trading today as a public company

Cyxtera Technologies, the Coral Gables-based global data center provider founded by Miami tech pioneer Manny Medina, is set to begin trading today as a public company. Its merger with Starboard Value Acquisition Corp., a $3.4 billion deal announced in February, was completed this week.

Cyxtera will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol CYXT. Warrants will trade under the symbol CYXTW.  

Founded four years ago, Cyxtera provides co-location services, which allow companies to keep their privately-owned servers and networking equipment in a third-party data center. The company was formed after Medina’s investment group purchased the CenturyLink (Lyman) data center business.

 “It’s a very big deal to have a multinational, multibillion-dollar technology company focused on cybersecurity headquartered in Miami,” Medina said back in a 2017 interview when he announced the new company. “It is going to help put us on the worldwide map – it will augment significantly the whole ecosystem we are trying to nurture.”

He was right, and now Cyxtera’s chapter as a public company has begun.

Cyxtera has grown to become the largest privately held data center provider of retail colocation services globally. The company operates a footprint of more than 60 data centers around the world, providing services to more than 2,300 corporate enterprises and U.S. federal government agencies.  

“Today marks a key milestone in a journey we launched in 2017 to build a global leader in digital infrastructure with the scale, connectivity and technology to meet the needs of leading enterprises, service providers, and government agencies” said Medina, chairman of Cyxtera and founder and managing partner of Medina Capital, in a statement. 

Cyxtera’s leadership, including Medina, CEO Nelson Fonseca, COO Randy Rowland, and CFO Carlos Sagasta will stay on to lead Cyxtera.  Medina and  Fonseca will also serve on the board of the combined company as Chair and Director, respectively, joined by Starboard Value LP CEO and former SVAC Chair Jeff Smith and former SVAC Industry Advisor Greg Waters.

“Cyxtera already has a strong track record of value creation, and we look forward to continuing to deliver innovative solutions for our customers across our global data center platform,” Medina said.

Cybersecurity company Appgate, a spinoff of Medina’s  Cyxtera, is also headed to become a public company through a SPAC deal.  Appgate entered into an agreement to merge with a publicly traded shell company Newtown Lane Marketing in February, just two weeks before the Cyxtera deal was announced.

Medina, of course, is also the founder of eMerge Americas, which launched its first conference in 2014 to promote Miami as a place for technology  and a tech hub for the Americas. He was doing tech in Miami long before #MiamiTech was a thing. Starting it all, Medina founded Terremark Worldwide, the data services company he led and sold  to Verizon Communications for $1.4 billion in 2011.

This story will be updated. Follow @ndahlberg on Twitter and email her at [email protected]. Sign up for Refresh Miami’s free weekly newsletter here.

READ MORE RECENT NEWS ON REFRESH:

Nancy Dahlberg