Bytes' barnstorming year takes sales to over £700m

Reseller expects to go public this year or in 2021

Bytes Technology Group has seen sales rocket to over £700m as it prepares to float on the London Stock Exchange.

The group - which encompasses Bytes Software Services, Bytes Security Partnerships and Phoenix Software - saw revenue rise 30 per cent year on year to £736m, in the 12-month period ending 29 February 2020.

Operating profit shot up 58 per cent to £31m.

Speaking to CRN, Bytes managing director Neil Murphy said that the growth came predominantly through a set of key vendor partners, namely Microsoft, Check Point, Mimecast, Veritas, Adobe, AWS and Dell.

He picked out cloud migration and security as the two of the key trends driving customer spend.

"We saw a lot of growth in that period from key partners like Microsoft, where our overall growth was about 60 per cent," he said.

"We saw significant growth in our overall security number, as you can imagine given the focus on vulnerabilities across corporate and public sector Britain.

"Customers are also concerned about the growth of their public cloud investment and what we saw this year is a drive to get better control of that cost.

"Digital transformation and hybrid cloud were also significant business drivers for the year."

Services revenue continued to grow, up 10 per cent on the previous year to around £25m. Murphy said this is mostly built up of security, help desk and software management.

The MD said that Bytes has started its current financial year well with good months in March and April. May looks ok, he added, but "won't break any records".

"We're not quite sure what the next few months are going to be like," he explained. "It's very difficult to predict how customers are going to react at the moment.

"For every project we're having postponed we're having a new project start, so you might lose a digital transformation project but you'll get a whole new firewall security project."

Murphy said that he expects most postponed projects to eventually go ahead, although perhaps in "different shapes and sizes".

"I think customers are learning through these months that actually most of their businesses are resilient and can operate just as affectively with most of their staff working remotely as they can with staff in offices.

"So I think we'll see cultural shift that will be pretty significant. That might well affect some of their plans."

In terms of Bytes' own plans the intention is still to go public, with Murphy saying its 50/50 whether that will take place this year or next year.