SCC cloud investment smashes £60m

Parent company Rigby Group unveils plans to double business to over £4bn by 2025 as it reveals year-end financials

The Rigby Group is aiming to be a £4bn business behemoth by 2025 as it continues to pursue aggressive growth across its six core divisions.

As a whole, the group covers six verticals: technology (SCC), airports, hotels, real estate, financial services, and aviation. Its group revenues for the FY ended 31 March 2016 increased 10.8 per cent to £1.79bn, with pre-tax profit up 23.5 per cent to £22.3m.

A breakdown of figures revealed SCC UK has exceeded £60m in investments for its cloud-delivered managed services this year, as turnover fell one per cent to £653m. EBITDA rose 29 per cent to £24.4m.

For its EMEA business as a whole, SCC's revenues dropped 0.6 per cent to £1.55bn, down from £1.56bn the previous year, with EBITDA down 5.1 per cent to £32.8m.

The 41-year-old company launched SCC in Vietnam earlier this year, focusing on infrastructure support and offshore development.

Breaking down the UK performance further, the revenue fall was due entirely to a £35m drop in low-margin product revenues here. UK services revenues hit £177m, rising from 17 to 27 per cent of total sales.

SCC UK's datacentre services division delivered revenues of £43m, up 67 per cent year on year. The company is expanding its datacentres in Birmingham and Fareham, having increased the capacity by 300 per cent in the past three years.

Sentinel by SCC - its cloud platform - saw revenues increase by 120 per cent year on year to £8m. SCC launched its Universal Cloud Gateway brokerage portal in April 2016. The portal is designed for customers to purchase public and SCC cloud solutions.

Steven Rigby, Group COO, said: "We have exciting new divisions set to transform the landscape of the group. 2016 marks the Rigby Group's transformation from an organisation focused almost entirely on technology services to a diverse, vibrant group showing profitable growth across each of its divisions.

"The hard work of the last three years is now paying off. We no longer have a single business but a capable group, which in time will transform into one of the UK's most profitable private companies."

Sir Peter Rigby, founder and CEO of the Rigby Group, added: "With two generations of the family at the helm, Rigby Group has built a distinguished reputation as both an investor and business operator; renowned for its independent thinking, seamless execution and a peerless approach to acquiring and nurturing businesses to unleash their potential. This approach has underpinned the success of the group today."

Breaking out the performance of its Financial Services division, Rigby Group said Nuvias Group - which houses distributor acquisitions Wick Hill and Zycko - hit revenues of £133m during the year.