Axcel, a Danish mid-market buyer, has turned a loss-making company it bought debt-free for one Danish kroner nine months ago into profit in a departure for the firm that usually purchases profit-makers.

Axcel bought NetTest, a Copenhagen-based fibre optics company, at the end of 2002 from its parent, GN Great Nordic. It had suffered badly from a fall in demand after the telecoms heyday of the late 1990s and was making a third of its DKr2.4bn (€323m) revenue when it peaked in 2000.