Bytes Technology Group, the IT provider, has reported a surge in income and operating profit as both new and existing clients ramp up their software investments.
For the six-month period ending 31 August, Bytes revealed that its gross invoiced income soared by 13.7% to £1.2bn, with the increase largely attributed to software sales and significant public sector contracts, including those with the NHS and HMRC, as reported by .
Despite this positive performance, the company's shares fell by approximately 6% following an announcement that hardware sales had not fared as well, leading to a 2.9% decline in revenue from £108.7m to £105.5m.
READ MORE: {}
Nevertheless, Bytes saw its operating profit climb by 16.3% to £35.6m, up from the previous £30.6m, while gross profit also rose by 9% to £82.1m.
Sam Mudd, the Chief Executive of Bytes, commented: "I am pleased to report another set of positive results for [Bytes Technology Group], with a strong increase in operating profit, driven by continued demand for our broad range of software, solutions and services."
"Despite the challenging economic climate and political uncertainty over the past six months, we have increased our share of wallet amongst our existing customers as they continued to invest in their IT needs. We have also expanded our client base in both the public and corporate sectors," she further stated.
In addition to these robust financials, Bytes has announced an increase in its interim dividend to 3.1p per share, marking a 14.8% rise from the previous year's 2.7p. This follows a 16% hike in the company's final dividend declared in May.
The firm is confident that it's well positioned to leverage heavy demand across its key markets, which include cloud computing, cybersecurity, and AI, through the financial year 2025.
Most Read
Mudd added: "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. Meanwhile, we continue to collaborate with our 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," she detailed.
This comes in the wake of a misconduct scandal surrounding Bytes's former long-standing leader, Neil Murphy.
Murphy declared his resignation in February after it was revealed he did not declare several trades made in the company's shares.
An enquiry uncovered that Murphy conducted a total of 119 unauthorised trades on 66 trading days from January 2021 to November 2023, causing the London-listed stock to nosedive.