Softcat smashes through £400m sales barrier

Ever expanding channel biz Softcat has reported another year of double digit growth proving there is life in the classic reseller model.

The Marlow based outfit had forecast reaching £365m - £1m for each day of the year - in fiscal '13 ended July, but smashed through that target, growing 30 per cent year-on-year to hit the £400m mark.

The public sector unit reached £100m turnover, the managed services and cloud arm grew to £6m, albeit from a relatively small base and the traditional segment of hardware and software reselling also saw sales bounce.

"The last couple of years were fairly quiet for infrastructure refreshes as people sweated their assets but we saw a lot of activity there [in fiscal '13]," said Softcat chairman Martin Hellawell.

The trick, the man reckoned, is to retain customers and grow the sales teams, which is easier said than done - he has waxed lyrical about the fundamentals of running a services business in the past.

Hellawell told us some 200 new staffers joined the firm in the year, more than half of whom came on board through the graduate training scheme.

Other appointments during the year saw Microsoft services director Colin Brown join Softcat as MD as Hellawell moved up into the CEO's office.

The fiscal '13 numbers were not filed at Companies House, they were provided by Softcat, so anyone wanting to discover the level of profit achieved will need to wait a few more months. ®