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Mid-market network and hosting services group, Six Degrees, has just filed its FY14 accounts for the year to end March 2014. Total turnover increased 34% to £68.9m while EBITDA grew 37% to £15m. From an organic perspective, the top line was fairly flat and the EBITDA margin stayed roughly steady at c21%.
The company is now six months into its current financial year and the patterns look quite different, reflecting the fact that no acquisitions have taken place during the period. The overall top line is on track to return to growth of 2%, while the contract base looks set to grow “high single digits”. The EBITDA margin is also moving in the right direction and is expected to increase to 24% for the year (based on a run rate EBITDA of just over £17m), due to synergies from integration work and an increase in higher margin cloud services sales.
Six Degrees was formed in 2011 from data centre player UKSolutions, MPLS provider NetworkFlow and voice services company Protel in a £60m buy-and-build venture backed by UK mid-market private equity firm, Penta Capital. It then very quickly set about building out its portfolio via a series of acquisitions (13 so far).
Penta Capital is now 3.5 years into its investment cycle, meaning that logically it could well look to exit within the next 12 months or so. It therefore seems like now is a good time to assess the Six Degrees story thus far.
Subscribers to InfrastructureViews can read the research note here: Six Degrees: Is the buy and build approach working?
If you do not currently subscribe to InfrastructureViews and would like to, please contact Deb Seth.
Posted by Kate Hanaghan at '08:06' - Tagged: results cloud datacentres research
Last week, techUK launched its ‘Three Point Plan’ on Public Services Transformation. It has been developed by techUK’s Public Services Board (PSB) and builds on the launch of techUK’s recently published ‘Securing our Digital Future’ Manifesto.
The aim of the Three Point Plan is to identify how industry will work with Government at a departmental level and across Government “to help ministers and officials experiment and innovate more successfully with technology”.
The three points are: Better Engagement, Better Information and More Innovation. There is no doubt that positive movement in the direction indicated is to be welcomed. But is it enough and what will it achieve? In this latest PublicSectorViews note we give our views on the objectives, the hurdles that will be faced in the plan’s implementation and its chances of success.
TechMarketView PublicSectorViews subscribers can download the research note – ‘techUK Three Point Plan: Targeting toughest UK Government ICT issues’ – now. If you are not yet a subscriber, please contact Deb Seth to find out more.
Posted by Georgina O'Toole at '09:52' - Tagged: publicsector
The UK Infrastructure Services supplier landscape continues to show a diversity of performance as large, established players struggle to grow and as smaller, faster-growing firms take market share. The competitive landscape, however, is intensifying further in the Race for Change. The pace of technology change has quickened to its fastest rate ever, creating significant challenges for established vendors who must keep pace with both new competitors and the growing expectations of buyers.
Today we launch the latest Infrastructure Services Supplier Landscape report, available exclusively for subscribers to our very popular InfrastructureViews research stream. The report assesses the performance of the UK’s Top 20 Infrastructure Services players, and examines the key challenges they face.
It is a MUST READ for any supplier looking to understand the suppliers and their performances, and includes our TOP 20 PLAYER RANKINGS, and PROFILES of the key players.
Read the report HERE.
If you don’t already subscribe to InfrastructureViews but would like to, please contact Deb Seth.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '18:41' - Tagged: rankings infrastructure suppliers
This latest report from TechMarketViews’ PublicSectorViews team – UK police SITS: market trends & supplier landscape 2014-15 – is one of a series of reports taking a deeper dive into the supplier landscape of one of the six UK public sector subsectors that TechMarketView’s public sector team tracks. The report can be read in conjunction with our update to the UK public sector SITS supplier landscape rankings (see UK public sector SITS supplier landscape 2014-15), published in August.
We consider the state of the market in which police sector SITS suppliers are operating, and how the market environment may change over the next few years. We also reveal the Top 10 SITS suppliers to the sector and consider how they are competitively positioned. For each of the Top 10 providers we give our view of their recent performance and prospects in the sector. Moreover, we highlight some of the more interesting players that sit outside the Top 10. Several of these players have the opportunity to make waves in the market as legacy contracts come to an end, legacy technologies are retired, and police forces look to new digital technologies to transform police forces. We will be publishing our detailed market forecasts for the UK public sector SITS market, including the police sector, in the coming weeks.
Posted by Georgina O'Toole at '09:15' - Tagged: publicsector markettrends police suppliers
We want to hear from the CEOs of small, privately-held, UK-owned software and IT services companies that are punching above their weight in UK tech for the fifth in our series of Little British Battler (LBB) events, which will be held in London on Wednesday 26 November 2014.
There’s no specific theme for November’s LBB day, but as always we’re particularly keen to hear from innovative SMEs that have an interesting story to tell. Successful applicants from past rounds have been active in a wide variety of fields from big data analytics and business process automation, through to cyber security and the Internet of Things.
As usual we will select twelve CEOs to meet the TechMarketView research team in central London in closed session to present their company and its market propositions. In return we will give unbiased, constructive feedback based on our extensive knowledge and experience of the UK software and IT services market. Each session lasts 50 minutes and there is no fee or commitment involved.
The twelve companies will also be featured in UKHotViews, the most highly regarded and widely read source of opinion and commentary on the UK IT scene, and in a special research report distributed to selected ‘movers and shakers’ in industry and government.
Many of the CEOs who participated in previous Little British Battler events have seen real benefit to their company in terms of increased market visibility and access to new business opportunities (see here for just a sample). This is an unparalleled chance to get your company on the radar of the UK’s premier software and IT services research firm.
Candidate companies must be headquartered in the UK (i.e. not subsidiaries of foreign firms), privately held (though may have accepted external funding), with annual revenues under £25m. Companies must derive the substantial majority of their revenues from software and/or IT services and/or IT-enabled business process services.
If you want to apply, all you have to do is click here and fill in the registration form (you may apply again if you were previously unsuccessful).
The deadline for registrations is this Friday, 17 October, so you need to act quickly. We aim to notify successful applicants by Friday 31 October.
Should you have any questions, please email us at lbb@techmarketview.com.
The TechMarketView Little British Battler programme is run in association with corporate finance firm MXC Capital.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '09:58' - Tagged: events lbb
The future for Enterprise Software & Application Services (ESAS) is firmly rooted in digital transformation but before the market can bloom, suppliers have the task of unlocking digital spend. Enterprises are predisposed to investment but are held back by uncertainty: about the where to start the journey, where it will take them, the ROI and whether they can access the skills they need.
As always, uncertainty creates opportunities for suppliers but where digital transformation is concerned, capitalising on it requires substantial change. The latest major report from the ESASViews research stream, ESAS Market Trends & Forecasts 2014/15 - The Digital Transformation Journey, analyses the current and future digital impact and the core issues ESAS suppliers have to adjust to, namely low levels of revenue related to digital transformation compared to the overall ESAS market but much higher growth over the coming years - 10%-15% growth in digital investments vs. sub 2% for the overall ESAS market, along with the shift to ‘little and often’ spending and serial projects. Business and go-to-market models also need to change to reflect the new buying environment. Just as digital transformation is about businesses and government being brave enough to do things differently, so suppliers need to be bold enough to think, engage, deliver and price differently.
Eligible subscribers can read the report here, if you’re not part of the TechMarketView community as yet, contact Deborah Seth for information on how to join.
Posted by Angela Eager at '09:44' - Tagged: software forecasts applications digital
With the announcement of major changes to HP's structure, attention will be focused on the revival of the Enterprise Services division. This report looks at the significant changes that are going on inside the UK Financial Services business which should drive a significant improvement in fortunes.
TechMarketView considers that revenue in HP’s UK Financial Services business has declined in recent years. HP management is taking action to support this growing sector and as FS firms focus on change we anticipate significant opportunities for HP in areas where it is strong and has scale. Areas such as Infrastructure, payments, security and cloud services are expected to do well. As a result, this operation should be able to play a major role in the return to growth of the wider Enterprise Services division.
Subscribers to FinancialServicesViews can access the report here. If you want to subscribe to the service, please contact Deb Seth of our Client Services team.
Posted by Peter Roe at '10:00' - Tagged: saas cloud payments infrastructure banking
The fifth in our series of Little British Battler (LBB) events will be held in London on Wednesday 26 November 2014.
We want to hear from the CEOs of small, privately-held, UK-owned software and IT services companies that are punching above their weight in UK tech. There’s no specific theme for November’s LBB day, but as always we’re particularly keen to hear from innovative SMEs that have an interesting story to tell. Successful applicants from past rounds have been active in a wide variety of fields from big data analytics and business process automation, through to cyber security and the Internet of Things.
The deadline for registrations is Friday 17 October. We aim to notify successful applicants by Friday 31 October.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '09:02' - Tagged: events sme lbb
Posted by HotViews Editor at '08:00' - Tagged: events lbb
