Calyx eyes return to M&A fray

New boss Steve Clark outlines expansion plans

Calyx's new boss has indicated that the VAR and services player is ready to get back into the acquisition groove.

Long-time Azzurri man Steve Clark began his tenure as chief executive of Calyx Managed Services last week. He told ChannelWeb he is inheriting a business on a sound financial footing and primed for growth, two years after it was bought out of administration by Better Capital.

Clark claimed that figures for 2012 would show the business posting "considerably better EBITDA" than last year. The plan is to fuel organic growth by further expansion of its managed services operations, but M&A could also be back on the agenda, said the new boss.

He indicated there would be no return to the frenetic buy-and-build activity that characterised Calyx in the mid-noughties, but rather a more strategic approach focused on new skills and cross-sell opportunities. Opening up more opportunities in the public sector might fuel acquisition moves, he added.

"We will look at the opportunities that come up and process them," he said. "[The public sector] is a market that will spend money, but getting onto the frameworks [is the hard bit]. Most of the contracts need you to have a track record. In terms of acquisitions, this is not a bad [thing] to look at."

Since its administration and buyout two years ago, Calyx has been split into two operations: the managed services business, and the m-hance software arm (formerly Calyx Software). Having rebranded the software unit and bolstered it with a series of acquisitions, owners Better Capital will now have to make similar investments in Calyx Managed Services, Clark predicted.

"The focus has been on [m-hance] because, as a software business, it is highly EBITDA-generative," he explained. "Now the attention has been turned this way, in terms of [providing] what we need to grow organically and looking at acquisitions as well."

Service game
Calyx has strived in recent years to leave behind its reseller roots and, by 2009, had taken hardware sales to less than a fifth of its total top line. Clark claimed the firm will continue to build its services play, focusing on areas such as SaaS and IaaS, but did not intend to exit product resale entirely.

Calyx can differentiate itself from such competitors as 2e2, Adapt and others through its flexibility, said Clark (pictured).

"It is about size, fleet of foot and agility," he said. "There are a lot of prescriptive managed services as people try to drive the cost of delivery down. There are people that sell services out of a box - ‘you can only have A and B, or A and C together'. We are about building what the customer needs on a customer-by-customer basis. That is what makes us different."