Gateshead tech firm Aspire Technology Services has pledged to make investments as it predicts continued demand for its services, amid challenges posed by the pandemic.
Aspire Technology Solutions – winner of the company of the year award at the Northumberland and Tyneside Business Awards held in February – has published accounts for the year ended February 28 2020 showing a 15% jump in turnover from £20.23m to £23.28m, while operating profit increased from £4.25m to £4.31m.
Recurring revenues – a key performance indicator for the business – also jumped from £14.5m to £18.3m.
The directors said they grew the workforce by 10% during the year, also increasing staffing levels by 24% in its customer dedicated technical support team.
And despite crunching numbers to take predicted bad debt and customer churn into account this financial year, the firm says it expects to see growth as firms’ IT needs change, with many adopting home working.
Where demand will drop for some products, it says it will leap in other areas, leading Aspire to pledge to make further investment in connectivity products, to help regional businesses.
In a report, the firm said: “We have continued investment in our connectivity products during the current year, widening the reach of our ultrafast dedicated connections so that it can benefit more businesses.
“Ongoing customer projects have paused due to site access issues and new business opportunities have slowed, through inability to engage with many prospective customers.
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“The demands of many of our existing customers changed and we adapted our operations to ensure that we were able to meet those demands.
“Given the uncertainty across businesses of all types at the moment due to Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on trading, we have modelled an increase in bad debt and customer churn through the coming months to February 2021 and beyond.
“We have revised our expectations for new business wins by product, since we expect the focus on businesses to have changed over recent months, with the benefits of remote working and the related technologies being forced into the spotlight for many.
“Despite the current economic environment we see continued demand for many of our products and services and we feel well placed to assist businesses with their changing IT requirements. whilst we expect a downturn in demand for some products and have remodelled our expectations on that basis, we are continuing to forecast growth in revenue throughout 2020 and to maintain healthy margins.”
Following publication of the accounts, managing director Chris Fraser said: “We have ambitious plans for improving business connectivity across the region and have invested £2.5m in the local infrastructure to launch our own North East full fibre network.
“Known as Ultrafast Dedicated Connections (UDC), we offer connectivity of up to 100 gigabit per second - the fastest speeds and most reliable service available in the country. We have plans to invest a further £4m in local infrastructure to boost business connectivity across the North East. In response to the Covid-19 crisis, we are offering North East businesses up to 12 months of UDC for free as they recover from the impact.”