Parts of Calyx offloaded to Daisy and Chess

New backer MXC sells off Break Fix and Carrier Services arms for £5.5m

Two divisions of Calyx Managed Services (MS) have been sold off by its new private equity backer to Daisy and Chess for £5.5m following a "strategic review" of the business.

Daisy Partner Services (part of Daisy Group) has snapped up Calyx MS's Break Fix business for £3.75m and Chess grabbed the Carrier Services arm for £1.8m.

Investor MXC Capital, the investment vehicle of serial channel entrepreneurs Ian Smith and Tony Weaver, bought Calyx MS from Better Capital last month for £9m following an auction process.

The Break Fix unit provides hardware replacement and support and for the year ending 31 December 2014, it generated gross profit of £3.7m on revenue of £5.7m. The Carrier Services division provides fixed line rental to channel partners and over the same period it made a gross profit of £2m on sales of £7.4m.

MXC Capital said the move to dispose of the businesses will allow Calyx MS to "focus fully" on its hybrid cloud portfolio, in which it has significantly invested over the past year.

It said the Calyx business it has left made a gross profit of £5.1m last year on turnover which reached £9.1m.

Marc Young, CEO of MXC, said: "These disposals bring back cash to MXC, while giving Calyx a clear focus on providing IT managed services to a diverse customer base, generating high levels of recurring revenue."