Acquisitions boost results for Datatec

Datatec reports 112 per cent growth in sales and acquires UK telecoms consultancy Mason Group for £19 million.

Datatec has reported impressive results for the six months ended 30 September and made a UK channel acquisition, picking up telecoms consultancy Mason Group for £19 million.

Datatec is the South African parent company of networking integrator Logical and networking distributors RBR and Westcon. Logical also announced a reorganisation to provide products and services for ebusiness, as part of a move towards higher margins.

Datatec's unaudited results show turnover growing 112 per cent compared with the same period a year ago, to R5613 million (£567.2 million), and operating profit increased by 116 per cent to R344 million (£34.8 million).

Jens Montanana, executive chairman of Datatec, said: "All our divisions are profitable. We are very excited about the opportunities for Logical following its refocusing on higher-margin ebusiness consultancy and services."

Rikke Helms, chief executive of Logical, said its ebusiness initiative will focus on the financial services, retail and manufacturing markets. She added that Logical will seek alliances with hardware, software and services vendors to strengthen its product.

"The transformation from traditional businesses to ebusinesses is an incremental process. In terms of technology, it starts with connectivity, collaborative environments and a robust, scalable and secure infrastructure. That has been our core business to date," Helms said.

Logical will focus on providing "e-outsourcing" - the design and implementation of ebusinesses, networking and product sourcing.

Datatec will form a business division around Mason Group, to sell telecoms and IP networking consultancy. Up to £16 million will be made available to fund growth.

David Mason, founder and managing director of Mason Group, said: "The additional funding will enable us to expand rapidly. We anticipate excellent cross-selling opportunities and have already secured our first joint ebusiness project."

Datatec attributed the growth in its distribution group to strong performance by RBR in the UK and Westcon in the US, together with revenue from Comstor and Technocraft. The increase in Logical's operating profit resulted from the acquisition of Satelcom in the UK, Bloomfield Computer Network Systems in the US, and CNI and Anite in Australia and New Zealand.