Softcat hails best year yet as it smashes £400m barrier

Public sector, managed services, security and networking pinpointed as standout areas

Reseller Softcat closed its best-ever year yesterday, as its annual revenue soared to £400m.

For the 12 months to 31 July, the VAR grew 30 per cent, adding an extra £93m to last year's sales figure of £307m. In its last three fiscal years, Softcat has grown organically by a cumulative 174 per cent.

It claimed that all areas of the business showed strongly last year, but pointed to its public sector, managed services, security and networking divisions as star performers.

Some 200 new starters joined the Marlow-headquartered firm last year, half of whom came from its graduate scheme, taking its total headcount to 600. The past 12 months also saw a top-management rejig, in which former managing director Martin Hellawell took over as chairman from founder Peter Kelly, as ex-Computacenter man Colin Brown took over the MD reins from Hellawell.

Customer satisifaction reached 99.2 per cent for the second year running, and 2,000 new customers began trading with the reseller last year too.

Managing director Colin Brown said: "This has been a fantastic first year for me at Softcat. To deliver these kind of results in a flat market, entirely organically, is really quite something. This gives us great encouragement to invest further in the business to continue the journey onwards and upwards."

Chairman Martin Hellawell (pictured) added: "This has probably been our best year yet. Colin and his team have done an outstanding job sticking to our core principles of aiming to be a great place to work for our employees and striving to be a consistently great company to do business with for our customers. I am delighted with the results delivered by the entire Softcat team."