The best and worst-performing publicly listed resellers so far this year
CRN looks at the share prices of firms, in pence, along with how their prices changed
Despite microeconomic challenges over the past few years, the channel has largely been resilient thanks to more demand for devices to enable hybrid working, digital as well as demand for digital transformation and moving some workloads to the cloud.
In 2019, the soaring share prices of resellers globally was highlighted as a key indicator suggesting that the industry is reaching its heyday. The stocks of resellers including CDW, Bechtle, Computacenter, Cancom had reached dizzying valuations, with CDW even doubling its valuation to $18bn between 2017 and 2019. Phil Doye, who sold Kelway to CDW for £431m in 2015, even told CRN that he thinks Kelway could've fetched in exceess of £1bn if it were sold in 2019 given the upwards trajectory of reseller valuations.
Despite thriving during the pandemic, tech stocks have since taken a battering post-Covid, with the the five largest tech companies shedding nearly $2.6tn in value. Companies like Zoom, which blossomed during the pandemic, are now facing the sobering reality of post-pandemic trading, with its share price down more than 80 per cent since its peak in October 2020.
The IT channel has had a similarly torrid time from a share price perspective, with many of the UK's largest and most well-known companies suffering double-digit share price declines so far this year.
The figures below show the share prices of the publicly lsited resellers, in pence, along with how their prices changed between the first day of trading (4 January) and the time of writing this article (20 July)
RM
Start price: 199
End price: 91.37 - Wednesday, 20 July (2.13pm BST)
Percentage change: -54.09 per cent
Market cap: £76.64m
RM's share price has steadily declined throughout the year so far, despite the company delivering "satisfactory" results in the face of ongoing challenges in the education sector.
The technology supplier to the education sector reported revenue of £210.9m for the full year ending 30 November 2021 in its preliminary results, up from £189m for the same period in 2020.
Adjusted operating profit grew 22 per cent to £18.5m but statutory profit after tax was down 45 per cent, which RM said was due to "£8.3m of investment program costs expensed following a change in accounting treatment".
RM chief executive Neil Martin said: "RM delivered a satisfactory financial performance in another year impacted by Covid-19.
"While the current environment remains uncertain, market trends are developing positively for the longer-term outlook of RM.
"This has been an important year strategically as we acknowledge a need to adapt if we are going to fully capitalise on the supportive structural opportunities and deliver sustainable growth."
Adept Technology Group
Start price: 226
End price: 143.11 - Tuesday, July 19 (4.30pm BST)
Percentage change: -36.68 per cent
Market cap: £35.82m
Adept's share price started to drop between the beginning of February and middle of March, although started to stabilise with a few hikes until the beginning of June.
The price then dropped again, although started to increase at the beginning of July.
The company posted its final results for the full year ending 31 March 2022, which showed revenue increase 18 per cent to £68.1m.
It's underlying EBITDA also increased 21 per cent from the previous year to £11.9m.
Phil Race, chief executive officer of AdEPT, said: "The board is pleased with the progress achieved during the year under review and the Group's performance in the face of the many, well-documented macro challenges.
"Given our focus on this aspect of our business the pro-forma organic growth in Cloud Centric Strategic Services is a particular highlight of the period."
D4t4 Solutions
Start price: 355
End price: 239.25 - Wednesday, 20 July (12.56 BST)
Percentage change: -32.61 per cent
Market cap: £95.24m
D4t4's latest financial results - for the year ended 31 March 2022 - show the business saw its annual recurring revenue increase by 32 per cent to £14m, whilst revenues were up 7.3 per cent to £24.5m.
Despite this, the company's share price has dropped throughout the year, although saw an increase between April and June.
Cloud CoCo Group
Start price: 1.85
End price: 1.18 - Tuesday, 19 July (4.30 BST)
Percentage change: -36.49 per cent
Market cap: £8.12m
Cloud CoCo's share price remained stable until the middle of March, when it started to dip despite seeing a few hikes in between.
However, it slightly increased when the company announced its unaudited interim results for the six months to 31 March 2022.
These saw the company's revenue increase by 18 per cent compared to the previous year to £11.6m, of which 70 per cent was generated from recurring contracts.
Mark Halpin, CEO of CloudCoCo, said: "With the marked headway that has been made, we expect to see additional growth in trading performance in the second half as our pipeline of larger multi-year deals is continuing to grow.
"There is still work to be done to enable the Group to reach its full potential and the macro-economic environment remains unpredictable, but with the hard work that has taken place in the first half to lay the foundations for sustainable and profitable growth in the future, we are confident of continued progress in the second half and moving into FY23."
Bytes Technology Group
Start price: 564
End price: 420 - Wednesday, 20 July (3.47 BST)
Percentage change: -25.53 per cent
Market cap: 1.01bn
Bytes Technology Group's share price has fluctuated throughout the year so far, although one of its noticeable hikes in the middle of March came when it announced its trading update for the year ending 28 February 2022.
The company said it saw double-digit growth throughout the year in its three key financial performance metrics with accelerated growth in the second half of the year.
The group also delivered gross profit growth of approximately 20 per cent and adjusted operating profit growth of around 23 per cent.
Neil Murphy, CEO, said: "We continue to build positive momentum in our business as we further invest in new talent and maintain our focus on customer service.
"The last year has seen Bytes continuing to strengthen its market position in cloud, security and annuity software and services, working with some of the world's most successful software companies. We are making good progress with our strategy and are well positioned to deliver on the significant opportunity ahead of us."
Capita
Start price: 38.34
End price: 28.64 - Wednesday, 20 July (2.43 BST)
Percentage change: -25.30 per cent
Market cap: £482.38m
Capita's share price dropped quite heavily between January and March, although started to increase from the end of April.
During the month the company announced it had completed the sale of its IT reseller and solutions provider Trustmarque for more than £100m.
Considering cash-like and debt-like items, the company received net proceeds of £118m at completion which included an additional £3m of contingent consideration.
It's financial results for 2021 also show it saw an £88m increase in adjusted profit before tax from stable revenue and benefit of cost savings, offsetting contract losses and general cost increases.
Capita expect revenue growth in 2022 following "strong" contract performance in 2021.
Jon Lewis, chief executive officer, said: "Capita now has the foundations in place to deliver sustainable improving financial performance; our new simplified divisional structure will deliver significant benefits.
"We also continue to prioritise being a purpose-led, responsible business. We have made good progress with diversity, will continue to focus on driving investment in our people, and have committed to a net zero emissions plan."
Maintel
Start price: 380
End price: 305 Friday, 8 July (3.22 BST)
Percentage change: -22.77 per cent
Market cap: £43.80m
Maintel's share price remained steady through January although started to dip towards the end of the month to the middle of March.
It then started to rise just before the company announced its financial results for the year to 31 December 2021.
It showed the cloud services provider saw a drop in revenue of two per cent to £103.9m compared to the previous year.
The group says its revenue declined due to only four-month revenue contribution from Document Solutions division (Doc Sol) prior to disposal and supply chain issues surrounding semi-conductor hardware in Q4 2021.
Maintel's share price stayed relatively stable following the announcement at the end of March, although saw slight dips in May.
Softcat
Start price: 1,739
End price: 1,352 - Wednesday, 20 July (2.48 BST)
Percentage change: -22.25 per cent
Market cap: £2.70bn
Softcat's share price steadily declined at the start of the year although hiked towards the middle of March, when the company posted profits "ahead of expectations" across all business segments in its H1 results.
For the six months until 31 January 2022, gross invoiced income grew by 33 per cent to £1.16bn, while revenue under IFRS 15 grew by 33.6 per cent to £770.9m.
Operating profit swelled by 12.4 per cent to £64.1m over the six-month period, while gross profit grew 11.7 per cent to £150.2m.
Despite seeing a decline of its share price through April, this started to rise again in May.
Towards the end of May, Softcat released its trading update for the third quarter ended 30 April 2022, which saw it deliver double-digit year-on-year growth in revenue, gross profit and operating profit.
K3 Business Technology Group
Start price: 179
End price: 144 - Wednesday, July 20 (10.02 BST)
Percentage change: -19.55 per cent
Market cap: £64.41m
K3 sold off two of its non-core units last year, including its Sage business for £1.68m to Pinnacle Computing and its Starcom MSP arm to Node4 last February for £13.3m.
Despite this, the company's latest financial results - the 12 months to 30 November 2021 - show the software cloud solutions provider for the fashion industry managed to narrow its losses.
It shows revenue was up three per cent to £45.3m while losses before tax from continuing operations decreased to -£7.8m, compared with -£20.8m in 2020.
K3's share price hiked at the end of January and remained stable throughout February, although started to drop through March.
The announcement of its trading update at the beginning of April saw its share price increase slightly and has remained relatively stable since.
SysGroup
Start price: 32
End price: 26.06 Tuesday, 19 July (4.30 BST)
Percentage change: -18.58 per cent
Market cap: £12.95m
SysGroup's share price steadily fell in the first three months of the year, but between 4 April and 6 April it saw a big increase.
This is likely to coincide with the IT services, cyber security and cloud hosting provider's acquisition of Truststream, which was announced on 5 April.
The acquisition was for an initial consideration of £4.8m and a maximum earn out consideration of up to £3.075m over a 24-month period.
Following this, the company's share price started to steadily fall again, although maintained a price of 26.50 for quite a few weeks before dropping to 26.06.
The company's latest financial results - the period ending 31 March 2022 - show it posted a total revenue of £14.75m, 19 per cent down on its 2021 figure of £18.13m.
SysGroup says its turnover was impacted by coronavirus but felt the "strong" cash generation and adjusted EBITDA performance in the last year shows "the strength of our business model".
Computacenter
Start Price: 2,900
End price: 2,442 - Wednesday, 20 July (2.46 BST)
Percentage change: -15.79 per cent
Market cap: £2.99bn
Computacenter's share price saw a big hike in the middle of March, around the time it announced its financial results for the year ending 31 December 2021.
It shows revenue for the full year jumped 23.6 per cent to £6.7bn with adjusted profit before tax of £255.6m - up 27.5 per cent from the year before.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share was 165.6p, up 31 per cent.
The Hatfield based company also recently announced its acquisition of Business IT Source, its third acquisition in the US.
Despite this, Computacenter's share price has been dropping since the end of April despite seeing a few hikes along the way.
Shearwater
Start Price: 111
End price: 140 - Wednesday, 20 July (2.20BST)
Percentage change: 26.13 per cent
Market cap: £33.35m
Security provider Shearwater has seen its share price increase throughout the year so far, with prices starting to increase around March after taking a dip throughout January and February.
It's latest trading update, the six months (unaudited) to 30 September 21, show the company achieved an adjusted EBITDA of £1.3m, an increase of 19 per cent on the previous year.
The company also saw increased software revenues, saying more features and new innovations are now providing a "springboard for further growth from our end customer base".
Phil Higgins, chief executive officer of Shearwater Group PLC, said: "We have seen both our divisions grow profits in the period under review with growth in our Software sales and a strong rebound in advisory business.
"The increasing quality of our earnings coupled with investment in our subsidiaries, enabled by our strong cash position, gives us confidence in the outcome for the full year, especially with c.50% of second half revenues identified."