Morse ‘on track’ with its shift towards services

Pan–European integrator Morse is launching a renewed recruitment drive to smooth its transformation into a service company.

The firm, which divided its business into three units earlier this year (CRN, 1 August) held its AGM last week where it revealed to shareholders that it was “pleased with the continued transition of the group”.

Duncan McIntyre, chief executive of Morse, told CRN the firm was well on the way to achieving its services-oriented goal.

“We are on track to what we want to achieve as a company. The restructure is behind us and we are recruiting across the business. It has been a quiet summer, but all summers are quiet. Our aim is to have 70-80 per cent of our margin through services and it currently stands at 57 per cent.”

McIntyre said the firm is not planning to make any acquisitions, despite “looking at one or two things”.

“We have no one on our radar right now. A busy acquisition marketplace is not necessarily the right time to buy,” he said. However, he added that the firm is still intent on recruitment.

“We will always be recruiting and growing and still need good quality people. Finding skilled staff is hard because recruitment is tough at the moment, particularly with the level of government spending, which is creating a lot of big IT projects and means the skills aren’t always available,” he said.

Alastair Edwards, senior analyst at Canalys, said Morse is on the right path. “Morse has aggressively looked at parts of its business that were not doing well and has acted on it, which is a good thing,” he said.

But he said too many players focusing on services could backfire. “If everyone is piling into the services and solutions space, it creates further pricing tension in the market,” he said.

sara_yirrell@vnu.co.uk