Trustmarque: Services arm on track for £50m

Services player claims it 'blew the doors away' in first half of this year

Trustmarque has said its services business is on track to smash the £50m mark this year after claiming the company's performance in the first half of 2015 "blew the doors away".

The services player opened up to CRN on how business is going after its full-year 2014 results were filed with Companies House.

Sales and marketing director Angelo Di Ventura said 2015 has been going extremely well for Trustmarque.

"The first half of this year, on the software business, we had our strongest first half year", he told CRN. "We have had a really successful first half year on the services side. Up until the end of June, we blew the doors away. Of course, there's some seasonality in that, so I wouldn't expect that to carry on through the rest of the year. We have still got quite a big public sector customer base so we had a very, very strong March.

"We're a very big Microsoft partner so we had a really strong June. While I don't expect to repeat in the second half what we did in the first half, we will still have a very, very strong and successful year both from a revenue and profitability perspective compared with last year.

"Our services business will be £50m, or something like that. That will be services, professional services, managed services and cloud."

The 2014 annual report showed Trustmarque made a loss before tax of £1.7m, compared with a profit before tax of £1.2m for the 16-month prior period. That was on revenue of £135.4m in 2014, compared with £151.4m in the 16 months before.

The loss was put down to uncertainly in September and October last year – when it was snapped up by Liberata after its previous backer Dunedin pulled out – and a writedown of an investment it made in Opin Systems.

Trustmarque's chief executive Scott Haddow (pictured) told CRN the Opin writedown does not reflect the success of the Trustmarque business.

"When we did the Liberata deal in September of last year, there were a lot of deal costs in there and a lot of balance-sheet items – not cash items – so we took the opportunity to tidy up the balance sheet," he said. "One acquisition – Opin Systems – that £1.8m writedown [was] in layman's terms the goodwill that was in Opin business. The reason we wrote that down is because we transferred all the business we acquired Opin for, into Trustmarque.

"You had a value of £1.8m sitting in the Opin business, when in fact, we had done the job we needed that business to do. What's really important is it is a non-cash item. It is not something that affects the operations profitability or the success of Trustmarque business. It is purely a balance sheet thing."