‘It’s looking to be a really positive year’: Kainos CEO on £540m revenue outlook
Brendan Mooney talks large contract wins, Kainos’ 90 per cent repeat-business model and why the group remains an "acquisition sceptic"
Kainos is heading towards what CEO Brendan Mooney describes as a “really positive year”, with analyst revenue expectations sitting at around £540m after the IT services group returned to double-digit momentum in FY26.
The Belfast-HQ provider generated £431m in revenue last year, up 17 per cent, with Mooney telling CRN that momentum has continued across all three areas of the business.
While Kainos does not provide its own revenue guidance, Mooney points to analyst estimates following its latest trading update as an indication of its trajectory.
“The consensus is sitting around £540m for fiscal 26/27, which we’re in at the moment, and obviously a big increase from last year when our revenues were £431m,” he says.
“It’s looking to be a really positive year for us.
“That’s across the business, and as the update in August talked about, we’re growing across all three parts of the business.”
The acceleration comes as Kainos pursues larger contracts, particularly across its Digital Services and Workday Services divisions, while continuing to generate the overwhelming majority of its business from existing customers.
Kainos goes after bigger contracts
Mooney attributes the improvement partly to an easing operating environment following disruption during FY25.
The snap UK general election and extended Comprehensive Spending Review affected Kainos’ government and healthcare business, while its Workday Services division faced increased competition as Workday appointed more partners.
But Mooney says Kainos’ response has been to focus more closely on areas where it has the strongest chance of winning.
He points to advice from Digital Services head Dan Kemp when assessing potential opportunities.
“The most important thing whenever appraising a sales opportunity is not about the margin profile or the size of deal,” Mooney says.
“[Kemp] says the one thing is: can you win it? Because if you can’t win it, everything else is completely irrelevant.”
Within Workday Services, that has meant focusing on higher-value, more complex and increasingly international engagements.
“If our clients want to do something very simple with Workday, there are lots of good partners who can help them on that journey,” Mooney says.
“If they want to do something more complex, there is a much smaller number of partners we can stand on our track record much more effectively.”
A similar strategy is playing out across Digital Services, where Kainos has improved its win rate while seeing customers move towards longer-term engagements.
Mooney says government digital transformation projects that might once have been awarded as six-month contracts are increasingly stretching to about four years, often with options for a further one or two.
For customers, he argues, longer agreements mean spending less time repeatedly going through procurement and more time delivering the project.
The shift is also driving a significant increase in contract values.
“This year we’ve got one contract signed over £100m, one in the signing process of over £100m, [and] one in the signing process of just over £80m,” he says.
In May, the organisation won a deal worth up to £150m with the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra).
Digital Services was the standout performer in Kainos’ most recent period, according to Mooney, driven largely by work delivering major digital services for UK citizens.
Workday Services has meanwhile returned to expansion, while the group’s Workday Products operation is approaching another milestone.
Mooney says Kainos expects the division to reach £100m in annual recurring revenue later this year, with its longer-term target of £200m ARR by 2030 unchanged.
90 per cent of Kainos' business comes from existing clients
Despite the larger contracts, Kainos’ strategy remains heavily weighted towards expanding existing customer relationships rather than continually chasing new logos.
Around 90 per cent of Kainos’ business in a typical year comes from existing clients, according to the CEO.
The group has just under 1,300 customers, including around 150 across Digital Services and approximately 700 each in Workday Services and Workday Products, with some overlap between the two Workday businesses.
Mooney argues that the model gives Kainos greater predictability and visibility while helping its margin profile.
International revenues climb from £4m to £141m
Kainos has also significantly expanded its business outside its home market.
Around 41 to 42 per cent of revenue came from outside the UK and Ireland last year, with the US its largest overseas market.
By customer numbers, the US is even more significant, accounting for around 680 to 690 of Kainos’ roughly 1,300 clients.
The CEO sees the US as a major long-term opportunity but is more cautious about an aggressive push in the current environment.
“We see a higher growth opportunity in the US, if you think about over a five or ten-year horizon,” he tells CRN.
“My caveat at the moment is that, as a non-US-headquartered company, now is probably not the right time to be thinking about aggressive expansion in the US.”
Canada represents a more immediate opportunity following Kainos’ acquisition of Nova Scotia-based consultancy Davis Pier last September.
The two companies had worked together for three years before the acquisition, with Kainos now looking to apply its UK public sector digital services experience to Canada’s provincial government market.
International revenue has increased from around £4m a decade ago to £141m last year, according to Mooney.
Kainos now employs around 3,800 people globally, including between 2,200 and 2,400 in the UK, 500 across Europe and 600 in NORAM.
It also has close to 100 employees in Argentina and around 130 across Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines, alongside a presence in India.
Kainos plans almost 900 hires
Kainos’ expansion is also feeding into its recruitment plans.
The company expects to hire almost 900 people this year, including 200 people through its early careers programme.
That comes alongside plans announced in June to create 341 roles in Northern Ireland over three to four years.
Mooney says the annual intake of young workers is the more significant investment.
“That 341 is experienced staff over a three or four-year period,” he says.
“A much bigger investment is about the 200 young people who will join us this year and the 200 who will join us next year as well.”
The programme spans university graduates, school leavers and a smaller number of career switchers.
“We will hire almost 900 people this year. It’s an ongoing big investment in terms of talent,” Mooney says.
“It’s about confidence and what we do is relevant to our customers and the opportunity in the market.”
‘We are acquisition sceptics’
But Kainos is taking a markedly more cautious approach to M&A.
The group has completed ten acquisitions over the past decade, although some involved businesses with as few as five employees.
“I would describe ourselves as acquisition sceptics,” Mooney tells CRN.
“You get to see some great businesses acquired and then them deteriorate very quickly over time.
“It’s very hard to run the acquired company better than the founding team.”
Cultural fit and familiarity are consequently central to Kainos’ approach.
Eight of its ten acquisitions involved companies it had already partnered with over several years.
The other two involved competitors it already knew from the market.
Davis Pier followed the former model, with Kainos working alongside the Canadian consultancy for three years before buying it.
Mooney says he receives two or three information memorandums every week but can generally decide quickly that even a strong business is not necessarily right for Kainos.
“We don’t have a very aggressive M&A strategy,” he says.
“I would be foolish to think that we will be better than everyone else in doing acquisitions. So many acquisitions fail to deliver the business value.”
Instead, he says the aim is to reduce that risk by being disciplined about potential targets.
“If you can just reduce that failure rate by being really clear about what you’re buying and why you’re buying it, that can be really helpful.”