Softcat CEO on taking competitors' market share, new reporting standards and defying uncertainty

Graeme Watt assesses Softcat's recent H1 numbers

Softcat exceeded its growth targets for the first half of its fiscal year ending 31 January 2019. Gross invoiced income (which Softcat previously classed as overall revenue) jumped by 28.5 per cent to £607.8m while operating profit surged by 40.4 per cent to £33.9m.

Softcat CEO Graeme Watt (pictured) and CFO Graham Charlton reflect on the last six months and discuss the UK-based reseller's growth plans for 2019.

What are your key takeaways from H1?

Graeme Watt: After a good year last year I think it's very pleasing. That's partly down to the fact that we've got good demand for technology in the marketplace, and we are taking share in the market. Our focus on adding new customers and selling deeper into customers continues to deliver, so that's down to great execution from the team as well.

We feel there are a lot of legs in the business and it's consistent with previous discussions we've had with you and others. We think our market share is still relatively low; although we are the number two by revenue in the market, we've still got only 6.9 per cent of the top 100 VARs, so we've got quite a lot of share to go after.

And if you measure the amount of businesses out there that we think are in our addressable market, north of 6,000 and last year we reported 11,900 as a customer count, so strong growth driven by great execution and continued application of those strategies, adding new customers and selling deeper into more markets.

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