As-a-service model driving Rigby Capital's first full-year results

Specialist tech leasing and finance business hails results as 'staggering'

Rigby Capital has accredited the evolution towards the as-a-service model as it celebrates its first-year financial results.

The specialist tech leasing and finance firm provides financing models to help private and public sector customers to "accelerate capital, bring forward budgets and de-risk their technology investments".

It had annual growth in terms of business activation in excess of 70 per cent, which combined with the French operations new business now exceeds €150m (£134m) per annum.

Nigel Jenkins, managing director of Rigby Capital, told CRN the results are its first full year of trading after trading for only 10 months of the prior year.

"What we have witnessed in this first full year is quite staggering. We have evolved from doing lease activity in the IT industry to now doing more as-a-service transactions," he said.

"On balance through the year, the portfolio splits roughly 50-50 between enterprise and public sector in the UK. We have done significant amounts in the NHS space and we do work in the governmental space - mostly central government, less local."

Jenkins said the firm has also expanded to include a new Spanish operation which is now gaining traction.

"We see ourselves as a technical capability to the vendors we support, rather than a front-line sales function. So if the vendors we support elect to go into certain spaces, then we follow suit.

"That said, we haven't progressed our activity in the education space, so that is a growth area for us. Schools is not an area in which we have seen any activity; it has mainly been in higher education so far."

Jenkins said there has been a distinct shift through to a true as-a-service model.

"That as-a-service model has traditionally been broken down to those who can genuinely support as-a-service and those who fund the assets supplied in as-a-service to an embedded lease structure. We don't believe the latter is a viable way and we are finding that the public sector entities are progressing down through the as-a-service model faster than some of the enterprise customers," added Jenkins.