Investment Case
With a 30-year track record, Bytes is one of the UK’s leading providers of software, security and cloud services.
We enable effective and cost-efficient technology sourcing, adoption and management across software, security, hardware and cloud services. Our strong relationships with many of the world’s largest software companies enable our specialist staff to deliver the latest technology to a diverse and embedded customer base. This has resulted in our long track record of strong financial performance.
Team Culture
We have a dynamic culture which drives our operational excellence.
- We have a highly experienced Senior Management team with a strong, well-established track record
- We make it a priority to promote our key values of integrity, communication, learning, responsibility, teamwork and reward. This was an important factor in Bytes being ranked 21st in the Sunday Times' list of the best 100 Mid Companies to work for in 2020
- We are committed to our CSR objectives and have made them an integral part of our business operations. Our CSR policy is based on the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and plays an important role in fostering trust between the Company and our employees as well as with our vendors and customers
- We believe that a strong culture drives our high employee retention rates, increases in sales person productivity, customer satisfaction and repeat business
Track Record
We have established a long track record of delivering strong financial performance - our 10-year compound average growth rate for gross profit is 20%. This is enabled by our highly motivated employees, delivering the latest technology to a diverse and embedded customer base.
- We have a diverse range of customers across the public and private sector and a long track record of growing its customer base and developing long term relationships with customers
- Strong financial track record of growth - between FY10 and FY20, gross profit increased by a CAGR of 20%. This growth has been largely organic, with further contribution from two strategic acquisitions
- Our customer base has grown from 1,651 customers in FY12 to 4,930 customers in FY20
- This large number of clients has resulted in low levels of customer concentration with our top ten customers making up only c. 8% of gross profit in FY20. Furthermore, the diverse customer base means we are not dependent on any one single customer
- In a Bytes Software Services customer satisfaction survey conducted in September 2020, 96% of participating customers rated Bytes Software Services as either excellent or good
Market Positioning
Bytes is a trusted partner to a broad range of vendors and customers.
- We have strategic relationships and trusted partnerships with over 100 vendors and their distributors
- Bytes became one of Microsoft's first resellers in the UK and has a deep embedded relationship with them, making us one of the largest UK Microsoft partners by revenue. We are a Microsoft Gold Partner across 14 competencies and employ 140 Microsoft certified professionals
- Bytes is also exposed to a number of high-growth vendors, and continues to assess opportunities in the market to further expand and diversify its vendor partnerships as new technologies emerge
Growth opportunity
We operate in a large and growing total market.
- Structural tailwind provided by digital transformation agendas, the growth of cloud products and the focus on cyber-security
- Focus on annuity-like cloud sales which provide a resilient gross profit base allowing sales people to devote more time and resource to generating new business
- Increasing the scale and productivity of the sales engine while focusing on maintaining customer service excellence and continuing to develop technical expertise
- There is a clear opportunity to expand the customer base and increase customer penetration; significant scope to increase market share through the continued diversification of our product offering including into hardware and services which each currently comprise only approximately 4% of Bytes’ gross invoiced income
- Optimising software asset management capabilities providing another tool through which we can embed Bytes as a trusted adviser to our customers with the potential to cross sell additional products and services
- Bytes will also consider strategic acquisition opportunities where there is scope to complement our existing offering and accelerate the implementation of our strategy