Trustmarque CEO on gross profit target, M&A wishlist, and the return of public sector spending

Simon Williams lays out his plan to earn double-digit gross profit growth in 2025, and what it will take for Trustmarque to make another acquisition

Trustmarque CEO Simon Williams names his one growth goal for the VAR this year, and which parts of the business will help him get there.

Speaking with CRN, Williams reveals he is “aiming for 30 per cent gross profit growth as a business this year, on last year.”

To reach this goal, he intends to double down on four areas of the Trustmarque proposition.

“The focus for that is optimisation, a lot of that through Livingstone; cloud, our cloud business grew 100 per cent year-on-year in 2024; cybersecurity; and those big infrastructure, datacentre, networking transformations.”

Trustmarque’s organic growth goals are clear. And inorganic is still on the menu, despite a recent slowdown.

The number nine ranked top VAR hasn’t taken its wallet out to buy a company in two years.

But Williams assures M&A is “definitely” part of the reseller’s growth strategy.

“We’re always on the lookout for a good fit with us, whether it's a specialist team to help us kind of get a new technology or new service line.

“Roughly our business is a third public sector and government, a third NHS and a third corporate.

“So, for example, we may look at rebalancing that.”

Williams adds the reseller is on the lookout for an “additive” business rather than buying an organisation that is “more of the same.”

“It would be either merging or acquiring someone who is maybe more corporate and less public sector.

“We have a small AWS practice. That’s an area we might look at. And we have a small ServiceNow practice. That’s another area we might look at.”

Public sector challenges

With a sizeable chunk of its business lying in the public sector, it’s no surprise to hear Williams has his ear pressed to the ground on what’s happening in the space.

According to the Trustmarque exec, the return of public sector spend is just around the corner.

“We found towards the second half of last year, in particular, the public sector was challenged.

“There was an election, and then there was a budget. Whether it is public sector spend or whether it is the National Insurance impact, we found that people were delaying spending towards the end of last year.

“That’s coming back. It hasn’t bounced back, but it’s coming back.”