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Public sector sales bolster Bytes fiscal year numbers
Channel player’s recently appointed CEO gets to talk of double-digit growth and a business that is looking forward
Bytes Technology Group has shared decent preliminary numbers for its latest fiscal year, providing its freshly appointed CEO an opportunity to talk up the progress made buy the channel player.
Sam Mudd was appointed CEO earlier this month, after a stint as interim. In her first comments accompanying fiscal year results, she was able to highlight double-digit increases in gross invoiced income, revenues and adjusted operating profit.
Gross invoiced income came in at £1,823m, a 26.7% increase year-on-year; revenues improved by 12.3% to £207m; and adjusted operating profit was also up by 12.2% to £63.3m for the year ended 29 February.
Contracts with the public sector, notably with the NHS and HMRC, helped drive growth, and Bytes managed to drive revenues through existing customers and renew business during the year.
The firm also increased its headcount by 13.7% during the period to make sure it was in a position to meet customer demand, and cut the ribbon on a fresh London office last march.
“I am very pleased to report another set of positive results for BTG, with a 12.2% increase in adjusted operating profit, driven by contributions from all areas of our business,” said Mudd. “Despite the challenging economic climate over the past year, our customers have continued to invest in their IT needs.”
She added that gross invoiced income and gross profits had both risen, “as we have expanded our client base in both the public and corporate sectors and increased our share of wallet among existing customers”.
Relationship with Microsoft
Mudd added that the firm’s close relationship with Microsoft had continued to bear fruit, and that it was in a strong position to take advantage of the more widespread emergence of Copilot, as well as Azure solutions.
“The Group has made strategic investments in personnel, internal systems and new vendor accreditations to drive future growth and assist our customers in navigating the complexities of secure IT environments,” she said. “With continued demand for cloud adoption, backup, storage and security solutions, these will be our key focus areas in 2024/25.”
Mudd concluded by indicating that looking ahead, the business was set to continue to generate growth. “Moving forward, through our passionate, talented and experienced staff, we are well-positioned to continue providing high-quality licensing advice, technical support and service delivery to meet our customers’ needs,” she said. “This will remain our defining USP.”
Mudd stepped in to take the reins at Bytes after former incumbent Neil Murphy resigned back in February, after notifying the board he had made a number of trades in the company’s shares that were undisclosed to the company or the market, resulting in a lack of compliance with the PDMR disclosure requirements.
In the preliminary results, Bytes revealed it had investigated Murphy’s activities and been concerned about reputational damage after his exit. But the firm expected any risk of that diminishing as the episode moved further into the past.
In her comments accompanying the results, Mudd touched on the changes in CEO position that resulted from Murphy’s departure.
“My appointment as CEO was confirmed in May 2024, following what had been a challenging couple of months for the Group,” she said. “Throughout the period since Neil Murphy’s resignation, I have been hugely impressed by the commitment and professionalism of all of our staff as they remained focused on delivering our strategic priorities as we have entered 2024/25.”
