Iomart CEO departs

Cloud player iomart has announced its CEO is departing with immediate effect, ushering in a leadership transition at the channel player.

The firm has been working to bolster its position as a managed services provider (MSP) over the past couple of years, with CEO Reece Donovan masterminding its mergers and acquisitions activity to support that ambition and grow recurring revenues.

His last major action as boss was to seal the deal to acquire Microsoft Azure Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner Extrinsica in June. The firm cost an initial £4m, with a further £0.3m payable on the achievement of key customer targets during the calendar year.

At the time, Donovan said the acquisition was part of its next growth phase, bolstering its position as a hybrid cloud support specialist, but it would be the last deal he inked, having now decided to leave the business with immediate effect.

Donovan, whose tenure as CEO started three years ago, will be replaced by executive chair Lucy Dimes. Her move means iomart will be looking for a replacement chair.

“The board would like to thank Reece for all his work in transitioning the business through the Covid-19 pandemic and energy crisis while helping to reposition iomart’s managed service offering within the broader hybrid cloud marketplace,” the firm stated in an update to investors.

Dimes, whose CV includes stints as UK&I CEO at Fujitsu and chief operating officer at Equiniti, took to LinkedIn to update her change in position and share her feelings about the move.

“I’m delighted to have been appointed as chief executive officer at iomart Group plc and am really looking forward to working with our amazing team, broad and diverse customer base, and market-leading partners,” she stated.

Investors will get to hear more about the company’s transition towards the MSP model when iomart shares a half-year trading update for the six months to 30 September next month.

The firm’s most recent full-year numbers, shared in June, showed a 12% rise in sales to £115.64m for the year to 31 March 2023. Pre-tax profits fell to £8.5m from £12.2m a year earlier.

The revenue improvements were down to a number of factors, including good customer renewal levels, organic revenue growth in the firm’s core cloud managed services and a contribution from its acquisition of Concepta in August 2022.

Concepta provided £6.2m of revenue and a positive profit contribution in the fiscal year, and was described in the results as “performing well”, giving iomart more routes to market and additional skills and expertise.

The firm indicated that the drop in pre-tax profits was partly because of decisions to make investments in upskilling employees, appropriate wage increases and cost-of-living support.