Comms Dealer

Today's deadline for the proposed take-private of Daisy Group by a consortium led by Daisy CEO and founder Matt Riley has been extended to 5pm on 22nd September 2014, by which time the consortium is required to have made a 'firm offer' in accordance with Rule 2.6(a) of the Takeover Code, or announce that they do not intend to make an offer for Daisy.

Last month Riley made a tentative take-private approach for the business at 190p per share backed by investors Toscafund and Penta Capital.

At the time Philip Carse, Principal Analyst, Megabuyte, said: "A 190p offer would value Daisy's equity at about £490m, giving an enterprise value of £600m, or about 10.3x current year consensus EBITDA. This is comfortably above the 6-9x of most of its UK B2B peers, though below Alternative Networks M&A-boosted 13.2x (though still 11.3x financial year 15).

"One clue to what Daisy may seek to do if privately owned comes from the other UK comms holdings of its backers - Phoenix IT and Six Degrees. A combination of the three would create a £600m UK business comms and IT player, behind only BT and Vodafone/CWW."

Distributor Exclusive Networks has outperformed revenue expectations by 5% in the first six month of 2014 with revenues of 232m euro. Year-on-year revenue rose by 27%.

Growth was partly driven by strong performances of Exclusive's main vendors as well as a return to growth for the company's business in the southern part of Europe.

The continuing acquisition drive contributed to positive results in H1.

"Organic growth has been well ahead of our expectations and this is coming from many sources - strong performance in core vendors like Fortinet, Arbor, FireEye, and Palo alto Networks, a return to growth in our southern European business, and a tremendous amount of traction in our Big Technology venture that targets the datacentre transformation market," said Olivier Breittmayer, CEO of Exclusive Networks Group.

"Recent acquisitions to grow the Exclusive family are also performing well and have extended our geographic footprint across EMEA and now into Asia-Pacific with the recently announced acquisition of White Gold, the Australia and New Zealand based security VAD.

"This market diversity has the effect of making us more resilient to regional economic variations, while strengthening our proposition to our vendor portfolio, many of which outperform market growth rates."

Chess has been named as the UK's National Champion in The European Business Awards for Customer Focus.

The European Business Awards, now in its eighth year, engaged with over 24,000 businesses from 33 countries with Chess being named as UK National Champions.

Chess are one of the UK's largest suppliers of business voice and data solutions serving over 40,000 business customers, delivering a full range of services including business broadband, phone lines & calls, mobiles, data, ICT, CRM and telephone systems.

CEO and founder of The Chess Group David Pollock commented: "We are and have always been an ambitious organisation with a desire to grow and be great at what we do.

"We strive every day to be the best of the best and this award is testament to our efforts. We firmly believe that happy people make customers happy and this award shows we are staying true to our vision of being a great place to work and a great place to be a customer."

Adrian Tripp, CEO of the European Business Awards said: "Congratulations to Chess, it is a great achievement to be named National Champion and we wish them luck in the next stage."

Sabio Network Services analysis has shown that switching from ISDN to SIP trunking has saved its customers £500,000.

"Our cost analysis clearly shows that SIP trunking presents organisations with a rare opportunity to unlock significant savings - while also improving operational effectiveness, particularly through communications centralisation and rationalisation initiatives," commented James Hughes, Sabio's Head of Support Solutions.

"Already we have succeeded in helping our customers secure cumulative SIP trunking savings, and that number will keep on rising as the long-term benefits of reduced channel rental and call costs continue."

Joined up comms provider Fidelity Group has been ranked No 8 in the Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100 league table.

The table ranks Britain's 100 private tech (TMT) companies with the fastest-growing sales over the latest three years. 

"This is the highest position ever achieved by a comms channel business and we are absolutely delighted to have been recognised for the results we have achieved," said managing director Alan Shraga (pictured).

Founded in 2008, Fidelity's turnover has grown from £400,000 in 2010 to £5.7m in 2013,  a sales growth of 134.15% in just three years.

"We are a small team but we have worked extremely hard and achieved this result in the headwind of the UK's biggest recession in decades," added Shraga.

"More importantly as a channel focused business we have succeeded because of the hard work and talent of our partners. Our mantra of Loyalty, Trust and Delivery has never had more resonance."

Shraga and fellow founder Simon Payne sold two telecoms companies before starting Fidelity, Cable Telecom and VNetworks.

Fidelity's joined up solutions for the channel  include Anvil, a web-based portal for customer management and billing.

Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna has praised Pennine Telecom's championing of apprenticeships following a visit to the data and telecommunications specialist's Bury headquarters.

Umunna and local Labour prospective parliamentary candidate James Frith visited to witness first hand the positive impact vocational training has had on young people and the business.

As well as meeting with MD Andrew Roberts the politicians also took time to chat with the ten apprentices currently employed by Pennine to see how they were benefiting from on-the-job training.

Umunna commented: "It is fantastic to see businesses like Pennine Telecom supporting and promoting quality apprenticeships and helping young people get a foot on the ladder."

Frith added: "Pennine is embracing innovation and its growth is founded almost entirely on people with a technical background. The company's success, and how it was achieved, is testament to the importance of providing young people with technical as well as academic routes into work."

Among the young apprentices and workers Umunna and Frith spoke to was Adam Tobin, 22, of Tottington, Bury. He joined the company straight from Tottington High School and has just completed a six year apprenticeship arranged through Bury College.

"I've learned a tremendous amount by training on the job," he said. "Over the years I've received a lot of help and support and gained lots of new skills. Now, having finished my apprenticeship, I have a great full-time job which I see as the beginning of what I hope to be a rewarding career in the communications industry."

The ten apprentices currently on Pennine's books are working across the business, including the company's sales support, radio engineering, telephone engineering, sales, service control and accounts departments.

Roberts said: "I, my fellow director Geoff King and our operations manager Xavier Senelle all graduated from apprenticeships so we know full well their power for personal development and the contribution they have made to our successful and growing business."

As well as supporting apprenticeships Roberts has also promoted technical qualifications and courses locally.

He and HR Manager Ann Barnes have been heavily involved in the development of a new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) Centre at Bolton College where Mr Roberts is a governor.

The company also participates in the University of Salford's Knowledge Transfer Partnership which supports businesses wanting to improve their competitiveness, productivity and performance by accessing the knowledge and expertise available within UK universities and colleges.

Nimans' 2014 trade catalogue is flying off the shelves with more than 18,000 of this year's 'Voice & Data Book' despatched to customers across the country so far this year.

The directory encompasses 7,000 products across more than 500 pages and reflects the company's 'Everything Connected' strategy - where resellers can find all the components they need to complete a job from start to finish, backed by a service and support structure.

"The catalogue has been well received and welcomed by our customers," said Group Business Development & Sales Director, Richard Carter. "We all live in a digital age but the catalogue remains a firm favourite as it's a convenient and easy reference point for thousands of products - on a desk or in a reseller's van out on the road.

"The high demand and positive feedback represents one of our most successful launches. Printed pages still remain popular in today's online and digital world."

GCI has bagged mobility services provider CommsXchange, a Vodafone Platinum Partner and Solutions Pioneer. GCI's MD John Whitty stated that the deal came after a detailed search for a right-fit acquisition target. "GCI has been looking for the right mobility business to acquire and CommsXchange proved to be the perfect fit," he said.

"This acquisition provides an excellent springboard to enter into the mobility product space to support the launch of our own applications such as Hosted Desktop, Hosted Lync, Hosted Broadsoft and Exchange."
 
CommsXchange was named Vodafone's Total Communications Partner of the Year and is closely aligned to Vodafone's UC and 4G strategy.? ?Ross Cooper joint MD of CommsXchange, added: "We are focused on carrying on our momentum and embracing the additional opportunities that being part of a large organisation like GCI brings.

"We felt that although we had grown a successful business and we are on a steepening curve this was the right move for us to make at this juncture.

"Becoming part of GCI will enhance what we can deliver to customers and because GCI seem to share many of the same ideologies and focuses the chance of this acquisition being a success for all involved is high."  

Prime Minister and Witney MP David Cameron joined Brendon Cross of STL Communications to hand over a cheque for £120,000 to Dr Mick Donegan, founder of SpecialEffect.

The money was raised in the Twin Town Challenge, which was organised by Cross and supported by a number of teams from the comms industry including Gamma, LinkConnect, Oak, M12 Solutions and STL Communications.

The Twin Town Challenge was based around the twinned towns of Witney and Le Touquet and saw 50 cars costing less than £500 driving to Le Touquet with challenges at three iconic motor racing circuits.

The event was in aid of SpecialEffect, an Oxfordshire-based charity that helps people with disabilities to benefit from the fun and inclusion of video games.

Cross said: "The amount raised exceeded our original target and will enable SpecialEffect to work with more people with physical disabilities by helping them to play video games using technology ranging from modified joypads to eye-control."

Dr Mick Donegan added, "By levelling the playing field with video games, we are bringing families and friends together and having a profoundly positive impact on therapy, confidence and rehabilitation.

"This amazing sum of money will give us much needed resources to enable even more people to benefit from our support."

Polycom has partnered with distributor Imago Group to launch RealPresence Cloud VaaS into the UK.

Imago is first to market with Polycom RealPresence Cloud Video Meeting Services, a subscription-based cloud video service.

Glynn Jones, Vice President Advanced Technology Group, Polycom EMEA, said: "In today's business environment organisations need to be flexible, both in terms of work styles and IT services. That's why we have rolled out our VaaS offering in the UK after a successful launch in North America. The scalability and flexibility offered by software in a virtualised environment, coupled with a subscription-based pricing model is a great option for many of our customers."

Through the partnership with Imago and its VaaS-t service, Polycom is able to offer a set of always-on virtual meeting rooms or VMRs connecting a variety of voice and video endpoints, priced by participant or by the minute.

Ian Vickerage, Managing Director of Imago Group, added: "Polycom users can be confident that this service will be compatible with their existing video estate while accessing support for their video endpoints and video service from the same supplier."

Jones added: "Partners are a critical component of Polycom's success. Together, we serve a diverse customer base with unique challenges to solve. Our combined efforts help them succeed, and we will continue to drive growth and broader adoption of Polycom's video, voice and content collaboration solutions."