Softcat looks West for next wave of expansion

Softcat has revealed plans to follow in the footsteps of Computacenter and open an office in Ireland within the next 12 months.

The firm indicated it will cut the ribbon on a Dublin office in one of the last financial updates to investors before Graeme Watt takes over next month as CEO.

Watt starts on 3 April and will take the helm of a firm that is expanding geographically and delivering strong financial results. As well as the Irish plans the firm has also opened an office on the South Coast and has expanded its Manchester operation.

Softcat released interim results for the first half of the financial year to 31 January with a 24.9% increase in revenues to £472.8m and a 15.4% climb in profits to £24.1m.

Customer numbers also improved by 6%, with 600 more working with the firm in H1, and the gross profit per customer improved by 15.3%, pointing to a deeper relationship in those accounts.

"We are benefiting from strong market demand for all our offerings and from all our major customer segments and continue to relentlessly pursue our simple strategy of doing more business with our existing customers and winning new customers," said Martin Hellawell, Softcat CEO.

"We’ve continued to scale up all areas of our operations whilst adding further depth to our technical expertise. This has enabled us to continue winning hundreds of new customers as well as developing existing relationships and cross-sell additional product lines and services," he added.

Hellawell is moving into the chairman position from the start of next month with Watt coming on board and he thanked Brian Wallace, who has been non executive director and chairman over the past five years, who is stepping down.

Computacenter announced plans to set up a Dublin office last November with Brexit behind the decision to keep a close foothold in the EU.