Business

Reverse byte order

Bytes Technology Group CE, David Redshaw and Altron have pulled off a very impressive turnaround at Bytes Technology Group, the former Usko.

17 June 2002

The investor community will now no doubt be keeping a watchful eye on the group to see whether it will be able to sustain the turnaround evident in its latest set of financial results. But analysts say it appears management is on top of things, and that they are expecting organic growth to continue.

Although revenues were boosted significantly by the acquisition of several businesses from Fintech, [even had those businesses been included in the previous year`s figures], the turnaround would still have been impressive, with Bytes reporting a R43.18 million attributable profit compared with a pro-forma attributable loss of R56.36 million. By the year-end, the group had cash of about R222 million, despite spending R60 million on acquisitions during the year.

When Redshaw took over at Usko, the company was in trouble, although the extent of its woes was not realised until later. In May last year he had to tell the market that the magnitude of the difficulties faced and the poor IT trading environment had been “somewhat underestimated”. However, he still promised “a solid, profitable result for the year ending February 2002” – a promise that has been met.

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