Bytes Technology Group saw continuing strong demand for its software, solutions and services such as for the rollout of AI and growth in virtual technologies in the six months to August 31 and headline earnings a share increased 19.5% to 12.67 pence.
Notwithstanding the earnings growth, the share price fell by 4.67% to R107.27 on the JSE yesterday afternoon; this came after falling steadily from as high as R161 per share in January.
The London and JSE listed group is one of the UK’s leading software, security, cloud and AI services specialists.
It listed on the JSE’s Main Board in 2020 following a demerger from Altron.
Revenue fell 2.9% to £105.5 million, while gross profit increased 9% to £82.1m. The cash balance ended the period 38.3% higher, at £71.5m. The interim dividend was increased 14.8% to 3.1 pence per share.
“Despite the challenging economic climate and political uncertainty, we have increased our share of wallet among our existing customers as they continue to invest in their IT needs. We have also expanded our client base in both the public and corporate sectors,” CEO Sam Mudd said in a statement.
She said the interim period had produced positive results with a strong increase in operating profit, driven by continued demand.
“The group again made strategic investments in personnel, internal systems, and new vendor accreditations to drive growth and support our customers…Our strong relationships with Microsoft and other top tier vendors allow us to seize exciting opportunities in cloud adoption, workload migrations, storage, security, and virtualisation technologies,” she said.
In the period, revenue fell primarily due to a decrease in hardware GII (gross invoiced income, which was booked as revenue and which exceeded the growth in software gross profit (where only gross profit is included in revenue rather than the full GII). This resulted in an increase in gross margin from 69.3% to 77.8%.
She said they continued to collaborate with customers to enable their teams to roll out the use of emerging AI technology, such as Copilot.
“With sustained demand in all these areas, and our expanding technical capabilities, these will be our key focus areas in the remainder of FY25 and beyond,” said Mudd in a statement.
During the interim period the headcount increased by 7% to 1 130 with particular focus on bolstering sales and service delivery teams.
Over 130 000 Copilot licences were sold across the client base to date. Both Bytes Software Services and Phoenix Software were named among the UK’s top 50 Best Workplaces 2024.
BUSINESS REPORT