Midwich CEO on Nimans acquisition, 2021 results and return to pre-pandemic levels

Stephen Fenby talks to CRN after Midwich’s 2021 results in which profitability exceeded pre-pandemic levels

Midwich CEO says that the Nimans business will benefit from greater independence now it is no longer affiliated with its reseller brand Avoira, as he talks to CRN following the distributor's full-year results.

AV distributor Midwich acquired telephony distributor Nimans last month for £27.5m, adding £114.3m in consolidated revenues to the group.

The deal, which completed last week, did not include £21.5m-revenue comms reseller Avoira, which is owned by parent company Nycomm Group.

Speaking to CRN, Midwich boss Stephen Fenby said that Nimans will benefit from greater independence now that it has split from its reseller arm.

"Splitting Nimans out [from Avoira] means it can now be independent from its customers, which I think will go down well," he said.

"We can work together to identify new opportunities for both businesses. We already see some really interesting developments in terms of being able to cross sell AV products into their traditional telephony customers and selling some of their products to some of our customers."

Fenby added that there are no plans to integrate or merge Nimans into the wider Midwich Group, claiming that he wants to maintain the culture of the distributor and help it to grow in the market.

"The strength of offer we've now got to manufactuers means we have the ability to get into different market sectors and customer groups, which should give us the opportunity working together to possibility go out and get some new brands and new technologies."

The CEO spoke to CRN following Midwich's financial results for the 12 months ending 31 December 2021.

Revenues ballooned by 23 per cent in constant currency to £856m, while adjusted profit before tax rocketed by 130.3 per cent in constant currency to exceed pre-pandemic levels.

Midwich was adversely affected by the pandemic, as AV sales to sectors including hospitality and events sectors effectively ground to a halt.

Fenby said that the UK market showed signs of recovery during the year. He added that business was however somewhat hampered by factors such as product shortages and from slowness in its hospitality and live events business due to Covid restrictions and the Omicron variant throughout the year.

Midwich's business in the education sector has been "fairly predictable" throughout the pandemic and into 2022, said Fenby. He added that he is confident other markets will return to near pre-Covid levels.

"We have order books that are much bigger than they've ever been, so there is demand out there," he said.

"Some of those orders are because we can't get hold of the product, some are because people are trying to order ahead, and some are because customers are missing vital components for a system that we're not providing and they've had to order it from someone else."

Fenby added that Midwich has expanded its product portfolio into new areas such as CCTV security and unified communications through acquisitions including DVS in January and the Nimans deal last month.

"We've been building our UC offering, particularly over the last few years. We've always provided a proportion of what's needed in a typical UC solution but now we're able to do a lot more with Midwich and Nimans together in the UK," he said.

"I think we've got an unrivalled breadth of offering to that UC market, actually. We've expanded but not radically outside of our focus area. We're specialists in audio visual, and that's what we're here to do."