Senior FP&A Analyst

at  VIRTUS Data Centres

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 Jan 2024 we announced our plans to expand our UK portfolio following the acquisition of the Saunderton Campus. The site is a significant expansion of the VIRTUS UK portfolio and is key to the continued growth of the business over the coming years.
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 customers’ expectations through innovative, high-quality solutions and services. We employ intelligent thinkers 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 are VIRTUS’ greatest strengths.

JOB SUMMARY

The Senior FP&A Analyst role sits within the VIRTUS Finance Team, reporting to the Head of Financial Planning & Analysis. As VIRTUS continues to expand in the UK and into Europe, finance has a critical role in enabling this growth through accurate, relevant and insightful financial analysis.

THE PRIMARY FUNCTIONS OF THIS ROLE ARE:

• Own assigned areas of the budgeting, forecasting and business planning process; establish appropriate inputs and outputs, timetables and necessary levels of analysis to clearly ‘tell the story’, enabling informed decisions to be made by the business
• Be a Finance Business Partner to Senior Management and Department leads, playing a key role in ensuring that these key stakeholders achieve their targets
• Establish new planning tools and outputs, including automation and migration of budgeting, forecasting and reporting functionality from Excel to SAP/SAC
• Financial modelling and analysis, including BAU analysis, modelling and stakeholder reporting, as well as supporting investment cases for new site underwriting and analysis where appropriate (greenfield, brownfield, sale & leaseback and M&A)
• Provide assistance as appropriate to the Head of FP&A and CFO (and other key stakeholders) when raising further funding (debt or equity) and other ad hoc projects

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The role includes but is not limited to the following: -

• Preparation of assigned areas 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, and capex decisions).
• Produce month-end reporting packs and dashboards on VIRTUS’ financial performance and operating KPIs to key internal stakeholders including finance leadership, sales, operations and commercial teams.
• Provide detailed analysis of expenditure, identifying and reviewing budget variances at month end and note explanations for the variances.
• Ongoing maintenance of reports and inputs for the business plan and cash flow model. Capturing all necessary inputs for historic information (cash flows, client agreements) and forecast assumptions (sales prices, sales velocity, operating and capital costs), leverage and provision of clear output information to include scenario analysis.
• Business Partnering with key stakeholders (heads of department and other senior management for assigned areas) to provide timely and effective data and reporting as well as ad hoc analytical support to improve business processes and performance. Challenging their responses, investigating and understanding all variances
• Build and develop monthly reports, analysis and dashboards to further analyse specific business functions and aid the decision-making process, including internal and external benchmarking of margins and other key KPIs
• Assist in the preparation of financial models and new business cases as required from time to time. Modelling and presenting new investment cases, both standalone and integrated into the business to evaluate the impact on returns and make recommendations
• Assist in the preparation of SMT, ExCo and Board reporting packs

General

• Develop and maintain professional internal and external relationships that meet company core values, helping to promote VIRTUS with external parties (e.g. Gartner, CBRE, Banks)
• Proactively establish and maintain effective working team relationships with all functions and team members both in and outside the Finance team, within the VIRTUS business and also key stakeholders/shareholders

Any other reasonable requests made by your line manager.