Financial Planning and Analysis Manager

Job Description

About VIRTUS

VIRTUS Data Centres is the UK’s fastest growing data centre provider which owns, designs,

builds and operates the country’s most efficient and flexible data centres.

In May 2023 we announced our plans to expand into continental Europe, with our first data centre due to open in Berlin in 2026, to be quickly followed by two full campuses and expansion into other countries in the pipeline.

Our purpose is to serve humanity by being an active, positive participant in the 4th industrial revolution. When we talk about our purpose, we refer to our customers’ customers; the child playing a computer game, the person watching their favourite movie, booking a medical appointment, a plane ticket, a hotel or doing their online banking; those things can’t be done if we don’t do our job.

Our mission is to consistently exceed the expectations of customers through innovative, high quality solutions and services. We employ intelligent thinkers – people with positive attitudes, who add to the quality of our customer proposition and business.

We value individual endeavour and initiative and encourage teamwork and togetherness because collective experience and expertise is VIRTUS’ greatest strength.

Job summary

The FP&A Manager role sits within the VIRTUS Finance Team. Reporting to the Head of Financial Planning & Analysis the primary functions are:

• Own the budgeting, forecasting and business planning process; establish appropriate inputs and outputs, timetables and necessary levels of analysis to clearly ‘tell the story’, to enable informed decisions to be made by the business.
• Migrate the budgeting and forecasting function from Excel to SAP
• Be a Finance Business Partner to Senior Management, playing a key role in ensuring that these key stakeholders achieve their targets.
• Financial modelling and analysis, specifically in the areas of new site underwriting and analysis (greenfield, brownfield, sale & leaseback and M&A) as well as BAU including analysis, modelling and stakeholder reporting.
• Provide assistance as appropriate to the CFO (and other key stakeholders) when raising further funding (debt or equity) as required for VIRTUS to deliver business plan targets. This will include building and maintaining detailed cash flow models for the business to analyse shareholder returns, IRRs, scenario analysis, exit valuation and capital structure options.

Main Duties

• Preparation of annual budgets and forecasts. Monitoring and analysing the operational and financial performance of the business incorporating strategic decisions related to the ongoing operation of the portfolio (e.g., major leases, capex decisions).
• Ongoing maintenance of the business plan and cash flow model. Capturing all necessary inputs for historic information (cash flows, client agreements) and forecast assumptions (sales prices, velocity of sales, operating and capital costs), leverage and provision of clear output information to include scenarios analysis for both standalone deal and shareholder returns.
• Preparation of regular reporting on VIRTUS’ performance and plans to investors and stakeholders. Assist with the management and monitoring of current assets (tenancy schedules, financial and sales performance)
• Partnering with key stakeholders (heads of department and other senior management) to provide timely and effective data analytics to improve business processes and performance. Challenging their responses, investigating and understanding all variances.
• Manage financial analysis for strategic growth plans – both organic and inorganic, to include all due diligence relating to new investments, including the preparation of business plans, co-ordination and review of external advisors DD reports, historical financial statements, contracts, and market research, as well as modelling and all presentation materials.
• Perform detailed analysis of the commercial impact of prospective client agreements and recommendations for course of action to follow, combining inputs from sales, marketing, operations, as well as finance.
• Build and develop reports and tolls to further analyse specific business functions and aide the decision making process.
• Market analysis and competitor companies – track and communicate DC market supply, and key estate plans for our major competitors through research and by building analyst relationships within the DC market.
• Internal and external benchmarking of margins and other key KPIs.
• Manage VIRTUS’ medium-term funding plan and make recommendations to the Head of FP&A and CFO on:
• Appropriate capital structure including mix of equity and debt.
• Incremental equity and debt requirements to fund new projects.
• Hedging strategy and requirements to meet VIRTUS’ Treasury policy and external banking requirements.
• Manage corporate M&A Projects as required from time to time. Modelling and presenting new transactions and acquisitions, both standalone and integrated into the business to evaluate impact on returns and make recommendations as to course of action.

Person Specification Qualifications:

• Academically strong, a degree in Accounting, Economics, Business or a similar quantitative field.
• A Qualified Accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent), depending upon your growth trajectory and career to date.
• Well trained in Accounting with strong FP&A experience – managing budgeting, forecasting and planning cycles; this experience will have been gained in a mid/large cap environment where you have had exposure to financial best practice i.e., rolling budget and forecast techniques.
• Financial modelling experience, the ability to build financial models in Excel (VBA) and / or other tools.
• Process improvement, through the utilisation of new planning tools.
• Advanced Excel modelling and PowerPoint skills. ERP experience (i.e., SAP S4/Hana & SAC would be advantageous).
• Financial analysis, able to distil large amounts of complex data and present in an ordered, systematic and more importantly useful (for non-financial stakeholders) format i.e., dashboards.

Advantageous:

Experience in Corporate Finance i.e., having been employed in the Transaction Services arm of a Consultancy / involved in Corporate Finance activity.

Remuneration package and benefits:

• Competitive salary
• Private healthcare
• 25 days holidays
• Modern, clean facilities, free coffee, tea and healthy snack bar
• Pension contribution scheme
• Eye and dental care benefit
• Discretionary bonus up to 10%
• Income Protection
• Life Assurance
• Cycle to work scheme
• Annual travel card loan
• Tech Scheme
• Electric car scheme
• Workplace extras - Byond card and Extras discount

VIRTUS is an equal opportunity employer. As part of our commitment to fight for equality, we work to ensure a fair and consistent interview process. We celebrate diversity and we are committed to an inclusive work environment.

We reserve the right to close this post for applications should sufficient applications be received.

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