Crayon and RM share solid numbers

IT services provider Crayon has shared details of its performance in the 2021 fourth quarter and fiscal year, making it clear that its expansion has contributed to the bottom line.

Last year, the Nordic-based business invested in UK-based cloud managed services provider Cloud Direct, acquired Icelandic IT services company Sensa ehf and, in its biggest deal, picked up Australian licensing and cloud specialist Rhipe.

The firm reported revenues of NOK26.4bn (£2.19bn) in 2021, up 35% year on year, while profit for the year rose by 30%. In the fourth quarter, the business delivered a gross profit of NOK951m, up 42.5% from the same period the previous year.

“I am incredibly proud of our team’s commitment to our long-term strategy for value creation, which has resulted in record-high earnings, phenomenal customer retention and stronger employee satisfaction,” said Crayon CEO Melissa Mulholland.

“Our people-centric approach in 2021 led to more investment in resources and a strengthening of our customer-focused services. In addition, we were able to complete attractive acquisitions to broaden our global footprint and deepen our expertise,” she added.

Mulholland said the business was in a good position to drive momentum forward in 2022 and it would continue to invest in focusing on services and innovation.

Elsewhere, education player RM was also sharing financial results, releasing preliminary numbers for the year to 30 November 2021.

The firm was able to inform investors that revenues had risen by 12% to £211m and adjusted operating profits had climbed by 22% to £18.5m, a sign that strategic plans to “reset the strategy” were showing progress.

Revenue growth was largely driven by strong sales on the RM Resources side of the business, which saw a strong recovery once schools started to reopen last year as coronavirus lockdown restrictions were lifted.

A presentation to investors hinted that operating profits could have been higher than 22% if the business had not faced a combination of higher product and freight costs and some one-off items as a result of the pandemic.

The firm is putting a lot of emphasis on its “evolution” strategy, which involves shifting more of the business processes and technology into the cloud. RM is integrating more of its systems and redesigning its processes so it can increase efficiency and get more access to insights driven by its own data assets.

RM CEO Neil Martin said the past year had been impacted by Covid and school closures, with the cancellation of school exams affecting its sales pipeline.

“Against this difficult backdrop I would say we delivered a satisfactory performance,” he added. “There were areas of the portfolio that were particularly encouraging. Most notably, we saw strong UK market share gains in our Resources division, which despite the eight weeks of school closures and a challenging supply chain environment delivered a 4% improvement on 2019, pre-Covid levels.”