Softcat H2 2025 Earnings Report

Softcat EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 69.50
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Softcat Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Softcat Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2025
• Date: 10/22/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:30AM ET

Softcat (LON:SCT) operates as a value-added IT reseller and IT infrastructure solutions provider in the United Kingdom. The company advices, procures, designs, implements, and manages technology, such as software licensing, workplace technology, networking, security, and cloud and datacenter for businesses and public sector organizations. It also offers public cloud, collaboration, connectivity, data centre and private cloud, devices, and financial solution services. In addition, the company provides IT asset management, lifecycle solutions, modern management, security, software licensing, supply chain operation, and virtual desktop and application. Softcat plc was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Marlow, the United Kingdom.

Softcat H2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Strong FY25 results — gross profit grew 18.3% to £494.3m and underlying operating profit increased 16.9% to £180.1m, ahead of expectations and driven by broad-based performance plus larger second‑half solutions projects.
• Positive Sentiment: Healthy balance sheet and shareholder returns — the group finished the year with £182.3m cash, returned £95.7m to shareholders, raised the ordinary dividend (total 29.3p, +10.2%) and proposed a special dividend of 16.1p.
• Negative Sentiment: Large, low‑margin data‑centre deals distorted margins and timing — hardware GII jumped (hardware +74.5%) but overall gross margin fell ~90bps, and FY26 is expected to be first‑half weighted as some FY25 large‑deal benefit will not repeat.
• Negative Sentiment: Near‑term profit headwinds from systems investment — FY25 included £7.2m of non‑underlying costs and management expects a further £20–25m in FY26 (mostly cash) for cloud sales and HR system implementations.
• Positive Sentiment: Strategic capability expansion and international optionality — the acquisition of Oakland strengthens data/AI and consulting capabilities, expands the addressable market, and the firm is building its US and Ireland presence with selective M&A optionality to accelerate growth.

Presentation

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Softcat Results presentation for the year ended 31st of July 2025. Thank you very much for your interest in the company. I'm Graeme Charlton, Chief Executive Officer, and I'm joined today by Katy Mecklenburgh, our Chief Financial Officer, who you'll hear from very shortly. A special warm welcome to those of you in the room with us here in person. This is our new, still relatively new London office, one of several new offices that we've created over the past year. I hope it gives you a feel for the Softcat culture and energy, as well as seeing some of the new styling and our new logo come to life too. Before I pass to Katy, I'll begin, as we usually do, with a quick reminder of who we are and what we do.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Even for those of you familiar with our story, it is evolving at pace as we grow. It's a useful annual check-in, I think. Katy will then headline the annual results, and I'll come back later to give you an update on the strategic progress that we're making. Here we are then. Softcat is the largest provider of technology solutions and services in the U.K. market. We operate across the full spectrum of modern infrastructure, encompassing security, hybrid cloud, compute and storage, data, AI, networking, and workplace technologies. We offer a very rare capability in a highly fragmented market: the ability to help customers design, implement, manage, and support increasingly complex and integrated environments through a single partner.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

We now have over 2,700 employees, and as well as in the U.K., we operate in Ireland and the U.S., and we've built a branch network allowing us to procure and fulfill on a truly international basis these days. We continue to work with all of the biggest and best-known and most relevant technology vendors globally, often as the largest or one of their largest partners in the U.K. market. We have over 10,000 customers ranging from the small and the mid-market through to large enterprises and from the corporate into the public sectors. I'll talk more later about how we continue to expand this range and capabilities and to deliver on what is still an almost unlimited growth opportunity ahead of us. For now, I will pass you to Katy for an overview of how we've done in the last 12 months.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Thank you, Graeme, and good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to share with you Softcat's results for FY 2025. In summary, our results for the year reflect the strength of our business model and ongoing success in strategic execution. Despite the continued backdrop of microeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, we've delivered strong double-digit growth in gross profit, which is our key measure of income, and in underlying operating profit. Gross profit of just over 18% reflects a 1.6% increase in our customer base and a 16.5% increase in average gross profit per customer, demonstrating further good progress on both metrics. This growth reflects broad-based strong performance across the business and the delivery of some larger solutions projects during the second half.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Underlying operating profit of GBP 180.1 million, which excludes the impact of GBP 7.2 million of non-underlying costs, and I'll run through these in more detail shortly, increased by 16.9% versus FY 2024 and was ahead of our expectations at the beginning of the year. We have continued to invest in the business throughout the period. This includes, as usual, growing headcount, albeit this has been at a reduced rate compared to previous periods, and a significant investment in new offices alongside investments in our internal technology capabilities. We've also maintained a strong balance sheet with underlying cash conversion of 95.6%, which is at the top end of our guided range.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

We ended the year with more than GBP 182 million in cash, and therefore, alongside our normal policy of paying out between 40% and 50% of profit after tax as an ordinary dividend, we are also able to recommend the payment of a special dividend of GBP 0.161. Turning to the summary income statement and starting at the top, gross invoiced income grew by 26.8% to GBP 3.6 billion, surpassing the GBP 3 billion mark for the first time in our history. This reflects particularly strong growth in hardware, up 74.5%, with software up 14.8% and services up by 15.5%. Hardware performance was mainly driven by strength in data center and networking sales, with also strong performance in server and compute, and this was augmented by the larger solutions projects we delivered in the second half of the year. These large deals were very large, low-margin data center solutions projects.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Software growth was broad-based across technology towers, while services saw strong growth both in internal and third-party support deals. Revenue grew by 51.5% ahead of GII, largely due to a higher share of hardware, which is reported on a gross basis under IFRS 15. Services revenue growth of 30.6% was ahead of GII growth, reflecting a higher share of internally delivered services, which are also reported gross. Software revenue grew behind GII due to a lower software gross margin, reflecting mix into low-margin public sector deals and the impact of Microsoft EA changes. Gross profit, which is our primary measure of income, grew by 18.3% to GBP 494.3 million. This exceeded our expectations at the beginning of the year and reflects strength across our broad portfolio of solutions alongside the benefit of the larger projects in the second half.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Gross profit growth was broad-based across our customer segments of enterprise, mid-market, and public sector, and on a product basis of hardware, software, and services, with each growing at least high single digit. By technology area, growth was driven by security, reflecting the ongoing customer focus on cyber investments, alongside growth in data center and networking, where demand was broad-based and supplemented by the larger solutions projects. In workplace, GP growth was more muted year on year, reflecting the impact of Microsoft incentive changes and ongoing subdued demand for devices, particularly in the first half. Overall, gross margin declined by 90 basis points year on year, primarily reflecting the impact of the larger solutions projects at lower margin. Underlying operating profit grew by 16.9% to GBP 180.1 million, with operating cost growth of 19.1%.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Commissions and other variable pay grew broadly in line with commissionable gross profit, while wages and salaries grew by 11.2%, driven by a 7.3% growth in average headcount and a 3.7% increase in average cost per head. The cost uplift also reflects four months of the national insurance increases, which came into effect in April. During the year, we've invested in our IT team capabilities and in our offices, with three office moves to larger floor prints, including the London office, where we're presenting from this morning. Included in the FY 2025 operating cost is also an impairment charge for our Marlow office and some realized Forex losses. Moving slides, as a result of the investments, the operating profit to gross profit ratio declined slightly from 36.9% to 36.4%. In the year, we incurred GBP 7.2 million of non-underlying costs.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

These included system development costs of GBP 5.3 million, relating to the implementation of the new cloud-based sales and HR systems. Typically, we would capitalize these types of costs, but neither system meets the criteria for capitalization of cloud-hosted systems. In addition, there is a GBP 1.9 million charge relating to the acquisition of Oakland, which is made up of GBP 0.7 million in transaction costs, GBP 1 million in respect to the fair value of the deferred consideration, and GBP 0.2 million amortization of acquired intangibles. We expect further non-underlying charges in the region of GBP 20 million- GBP 25 million in FY 2026, primarily relating to the sales and HR system implementation. These multi-year projects with peak spend in FY2206 build a foundational platform for Softcat's data, digital, and AI transformation journey, and Graeme will give more color on this shortly.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

After deducting non-underlying costs, statutory operating profit was GBP 172.9 million, an increase of 12.2% year on year. Net interest income from the year was in line with the previous year at GBP 5.3 million, with an increase in interest costs from the new office lease liabilities, offset by increased interest earned from improved cash management in the period. Lastly, tax increased in line with gross profit, resulting in profit after tax growth of 11.7%. Touching now on our customer base and portfolio offering, our growth is supported by the diversity of our customer base and the breadth and depth of our customer offering. On the left, you can see the latest customer segmental view of our business, which remains very well balanced. The public sector and enterprise segments of our business together account for just over half of gross invoiced income, with mid-market accounting for the balance.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

The middle chart shows the spread of our activity between our traditional technology resale business and our services offering. On the right, you can see that we continue to generate well-balanced income across all areas of our technology portfolio, ranging from the cloud and data centers through networking, security, and end-user compute. The diversity of our customer base and breadth and depth of our offering is a key strength of our business, and this underpins the sustainability of our growth model and our opportunity to further scale. Moving on to our customer metrics, the chart on the left shows the growth in our entire customer base and growth in average gross profit per customer, which demonstrates our ongoing ability to acquire new customers and sell more to existing customers.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

During the year, we have grown our customer base by 1.6% to almost 10,200 customers and grown gross profit per customer by 16.5% to GBP 48,500. The graph on the right shows a more detailed view of those customers with whom we have an established trading relationship and where we thus experience lower churn rates. This view focuses on the more than 8,000 customers that deliver at least GBP 1,000 of gross profit each year. In this cohort, there is a more balanced profile of growth between customer growth of 3.7% and GP per customer growth of 14.1%. The longer tail of transactional customers continues to represent an important source of future growth for us, yet our established customers generally account for at least 99% of the group's current gross profit. Now moving on to cash.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

This year, we have slightly amended the definition of cash conversion to reflect the introduction of the underlying operating metrics that exclude non-underlying items. This means that our new APM is underlying cash conversion, which is net cash generated from operating activities before taxation and any acquisition-related cash flows, including deferred consideration outflows, net of capital expenditure as a percentage of underlying operating profit. Underlying cash conversion in FY 2025 was 95.6%, reflecting continued good working capital management as we continue to manage customer and vendor payment terms in our deals. You may have noted that we are carrying more inventory at the balance sheet date than normal. This relates to a large deal which is still in progress, and while the inventory is elevated, it doesn't impact networking capital or year-end cash as we've been prepaid by the customer, and we in turn have prepaid suppliers for the stock.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Depreciation and amortization stepped up year on year due to the investment in offices and internal technology, and CapEx more than doubled to GBP 15.2 million in the year, primarily reflecting the investment in new offices. The increase in other is due to the add-back of non-cash impairments and Forex movements. Higher cash tax reflects the growth in profits in line with the income statement. We've returned GBP 95.7 million of cash to shareholders during the year, and the net cash paid for Oakland was GBP 7.4 million. Thus, we ended the year with a cash balance of GBP 182.3 million, an increase of GBP 23.8 million year on year. Looking forward to FY 2026, we expect cash conversion to be towards the lower end of our guided range of 85%-95% due to the cash outflows related to the cloud-based sales and HR systems. This next slide covers the dividend.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

As a reminder, the interim dividend paid back in May was GBP 0.089. In line with our new policy of paying out one-third of the previous year's ordinary dividend as an interim in the current year, the board is proposing a final ordinary dividend of GBP 0.204, reflecting our normal policy of paying out between 40% and 50% of profit after tax. This represents a total ordinary dividend for the year of GBP 0.293, an increase of 10.2% on FY 2024. In addition, we're also proposing a special dividend of GBP 0.161. This is in line with our capital allocation policy to return excess cash to shareholders, subject to maintaining a cash flow, which we've raised this year to GBP 90 million from GBP 75 million, reflecting the operational needs of the business as we continue to grow. Turning now to capital allocation, we have a disciplined approach to capital allocation, and our framework remains unchanged.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Our top priority is to invest in future organic growth, which supports our ambition to take further share in expanding addressable markets and enables us to scale our business over the long term. During the year, we've invested in the long-term growth potential of Softcat, increasing our office footprint, increasing headcount, developing our data and digital platforms, and investing in core systems and IT capabilities. Our second priority is to maintain a progressive ordinary dividend policy. Any excess capital is then either allocated to compelling strategic investments or returned to shareholders. In the year, we've made our first acquisition, buying Oakland, a data and AI services company, and we continue to explore further acquisition opportunities, which could include further capability bolt-on acquisitions to expand our portfolio offering or expansion in international markets. Finally, moving to the outlook.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Looking ahead, Softcat remains well positioned to deliver significant growth, and our guidance for FY 2026 remains consistent with that provided at our FY 2025 trading update in August. We transacted a couple of very large data center deals in FY 2025, some of which are recognized in H2 FY 2025, and some of which are currently anticipated to be recognized in H1 FY 2025. Large deals are very much part of our underlying business, but these are exceptionally large, and given the cumulative size and phasing of the deals, there is an element in FY 2025 that can't be replicated on a one-year basis, and we've quantified this incremental contribution as a beneficial GBP 10 million impact on FY 2025 operating profit.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Excluding this incremental contribution from large projects in FY 2025, we expect to deliver low double-digit gross profit growth and high single-digit underlying operating profit growth in FY 2026, which is in line with our normal growth framework. When we include the significant incremental contribution from large deals in FY 2025, this translates to high single-digit gross profit growth and low single-digit growth in underlying operating profit in FY 2026. I think it's helpful to note that this gives a two-year CAGR from FY 2024 to FY 2026 of circa 12% for gross profit and 9% for underlying operating profit, which effectively normalizes for that incremental contribution in FY 2025. The FY 2025 second-half phasing of these large projects and the anticipated H1 phasing in FY 2026 noting that this is dependent on both vendor and customer timelines, means that the underlying operating profit growth for FY 2026 will be first half-weighted.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

With that, I'll now hand back to Graeme to run through the strategic update.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Thank you, Katy, and I will now talk about Softcat's future because although the market hasn't been easy over the past few years, it is still in long-term structural growth, and I can't think of a more exciting industry for us to be in. To set the scene and remind us of that, I'm going to start with the momentum with which we enter this year. It's not momentum that we've gained just over the last 12 months. It's momentum that we've developed over 32 years, and you can see it visually represented here. As you can see, we've come a long way in that time, relentlessly scaling our business to become the biggest operator in the U.K. market, create the broadest and deepest offering. Yet, despite that, as I said before, we still have almost unlimited room for future growth.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Our industry is highly fragmented, and we estimate that at most we've got a 4% or 5% share of the addressable market, and that is to say the market that we're equipped to directly address today. The breadth of our offering has served us very well through both upswings and periods of more challenging market conditions, and you can see that clearly through the consistency of our growth. Mainly through organic investment, but also now our acquisition of Oakland, we've extended that addressable market and relevance further each year. We've moved into new and exciting high-growth areas such as data services and AI. Over the past five years, we've also begun to expand internationally. We've established a strong foothold in Ireland, and with more customers pulling us into overseas opportunities, such as in the U.S., we've got the capacity and capability and reach now to accelerate further.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

In terms of our future opportunity, I will come at it from a few different angles. Before I get into that, I'll pause just for a minute on something that we won't be changing and something that will be totally consistent about how we will grow in the future. That's where we get our primary source of advantage from. As you know, that is our culture and our people. This simple illustration, which you've seen before, is still the driving force behind our success. The industry-leading customer service that our special culture delivers creates trust that enables outstanding performance and growth, which enables further investment in our proposition. This flywheel is still the heart of everything we do. You can see in the center of it the two sources of advantage that I think we have. Firstly, the highly engaged employees that are the product of our culture.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

They will always be our number one priority and the main source of advantage. The second element of that advantage in the middle is the best-in-class proposition. There is a lot going on within that to enhance the value that we can deliver for customers. We've previously shared the different components of that proposition and described how we intend to develop each in turn. We've refined that down now into three key themes and combined those with the culture to create what I now call our four big engines of growth to power us towards our future ambitions. You can see them illustrated here. I'll talk about each in turn, about what we've done and about what we will do to build them and tune them up for the opportunity ahead.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

They encompass the special culture, but also sales and customer excellence, the breadth and quality of our offering, and operational excellence. Continued investment in all four of them will drive our strategy. I'll talk about each in turn. Firstly, our special culture. We are not a special place to work because we've been successful. Softcat has been successful because our people have made it a special place to work. The drive, the energy, the positivity of our people, it's a force of nature, creates a momentum and forward motion like nothing I saw before joining Softcat. We devote an enormous amount of time and effort to preserving the power that that creates. As we continue to grow, the empowerment and support that we give to the incredible people who lead our local office leadership teams becomes ever more important. Culture happens at a local level and in a physical environment.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

This is one of the reasons that we've invested so significantly over such a long period of time in our workplaces and the training, coaching, and support that we give our people. We've stepped that up over the last 12 months. We've carried out four major moves and refits to some of the biggest offices that we have, and we've got more yet to come. You can see Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, and obviously the London office that we're in today on the slide there. Dublin and Glasgow are next, and the new styling's being updated across the rest of the offices as well. Alongside that work on the fabric of our buildings, we are stepping up the recognition and support that those local leadership teams get as well.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Each office has got a local identity and a way of doing things, but the ethos, the energy, and the drive is the consistent theme based on a genuine care for people and a shared purpose and celebration of success as a team. We've continued to receive positive external recognition for the strength of the culture, including for the first time being certified a great place to work in the U.S., alongside the existing accreditations that we have in the U.K. and Ireland. We've just had the whole company together at the NEC in Birmingham for our annual kickoff to celebrate what we achieved last year and plot our route forwards together.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

We are now in the process of getting our people's feedback, whether from new apprentices or veterans of 30 years, and we do have some of those, to hear what they feel that we're doing well and where we need to improve and evolve. Their feedback, along with that that we get from our customers, those are the two single biggest and most important inputs each year to our strategy. That leads us on to the second one of our engines, which is sales and customer excellence. This is all about ensuring that our sales teams continue to lead the industry through the training support that we give them. It also extends beyond the sales teams to encompass what is truly an organizational approach to customer service.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

This pyramid, which is familiar to many of you, and we've used it before, shows a representation of how our salespeople shape that customer opportunity over time and deliver growth through outstanding service, building trust and loyalty. Each layer of this pyramid is defined by the amount of gross profit delivered by our customers. As you move up the chart, you can see an increase in customer tenure as we form deeper relationships. We have more vendor presence in each account and the lower churn rates that result as we build that trust. In the bottom layer, the customer pool are customers with whom we've either not yet trading or have just made a transactional start. These customers are generally with our and being targeted by our junior account managers and just beginning to work with us.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

As you move up through the layers, the relationship builds towards that trusted advisor status. At the top there, the pyramid at the top, it isn't simply a reflection of the size of the customers' and IT budgets in that layer. You can see that only around a third of the customers up the top there are the largest enterprise scale organizations that we work with. Two-thirds there are still mid-market businesses. That shows the success that we are able to have in the mid-market space, but also that we've got very significant scope to do more in the enterprise segment as well. On the right-hand side, we've outlined the number of large solutions that we are delivering each year, which is up by around 50% in the last 12 months.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

As we keep growing our capabilities and our offering and deepen those relationships with more and more customers, we expect to continue to grow that large solutions element of our business as well. Turning the slide again now, but staying on this topic, as I alluded to earlier, feedback from our customers is a key input to how we build for the future. We formally survey all of our customers on an annual basis, and that feeds into the customer satisfaction report, some of the results of which you can see summarized here. They remain exceptionally high. We had a record number, far more than ever before, actually, customer contacts respond this year. We've never had more people telling us so clearly how highly they rate the value of the service that we provide.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Our NPS score increased by 1 to 64, but the survey results also give us insight into what our customers are focusing on and planning for their businesses. Unsurprisingly, data security and AI feature prominently, and our acquisition of Oakland is helping us to drive more conversations across those areas. The desire in our customers to innovate their business models is also very clear. Having a single partner, as I mentioned before, that can collaborate on all these areas is a huge advantage. We can advise on integrated solutions that can be implemented as part of long-term strategic roadmaps, and our account managers can remain focused on working with a customer in the areas that are important to them and not banging a single self-interested drum.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

That alignment of interests is an incredibly powerful force for performance, especially in more challenging conditions, and for sustaining our long-term relevance to the customer. Turning now then to the third engine and the breadth and quality of our offering. This slide is another one that should be familiar. I think it neatly captures the range of our portfolio, comprising the technical skills that we have, the services that we provide across all the technology areas, along with the vendor accreditations that we hold. Across the top, you can see how we segment our technology proposition into five key areas. This gives us a very rare span across the entirety of modern infrastructure, from the edge to the cloud, from software to hardware to services, from physical supply of devices to the re-architecture and management of data.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

We work with all the largest and most established vendors. We are accredited to all of their top-level programs, and we are the first port of call as well for exciting and emerging new technologies. Our services range from advisory and architecture through to implementation, support, and management of solutions. This gives our account managers the confidence and credibility to work with their customers, knowing whatever issues or challenges that particular customer is currently facing, regardless of where it is in their technology stack, Softcat is best placed to help them in some way. Over the past year or so, we've been adding to and deepening those capabilities and services, as we always do. That has been again through organic hiring, but also for the first time this year through acquisition.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

We will have a look at a brief overview now of that Oakland acquisition, which we completed back in April. It has significantly enhanced our capability in the data and AI space, and among other technologies, it also supports perfectly our partnership with Microsoft. We originally worked with Oakland as a customer of theirs, and to help us, they were helping us with our own data transformation. In working with them, we could see a number of things. Firstly, that they were a quality provider, they were capable, and they could execute. We could also see a very clear affinity between their culture and ethos and ours. We could see that the help that they were giving us was relevant across all of our customer base too. Data engineering and governance is the key foundational layer to AI transformation and the creation of agentic AI systems.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

As we say internally, the more that we looked at that on that previous slide that I showed you of our proposition, the more that we could see an Oakland-shaped hole in it. They could see it as well. We brought the two businesses together. They were with us at the All Company kickoff event, which I just mentioned. Watching our two businesses come together has been really exciting because the pipeline that we're developing and the response of the vendors like Microsoft, but also like IBM, like NVIDIA, Intel, and many, many others, and the conversations we're having with customers about their data is really exciting. This isn't just of benefit to Softcat for the consultancy and data engineering revenue stream that it will bring to us. The acquisition significantly expands our addressable market in other ways too.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

As you can see from some of the vendor names that I just mentioned there that play in that data and AI and high-performance compute space, it also deepens our relevance to the expanding portfolio of many other traditional players that operate across our portfolio as well. We're delighted with the progress we've made on the joint integration plan. It's been focused so far on very carefully and selectively linking up our sales motions. That, as I said, has generated a terrific pipeline both for Oakland and for the broader Softcat portfolio. Finally, now we'll turn to the fourth engine, operational excellence. Our vision is to build a business which is increasingly automated, smarter, easier to interact with for both customers and our supply chain, and using data more intelligently.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

This will improve both the scalability and also the effectiveness of our business, but also enhance customer and employee experiences, helping, amongst other things, for us to get the right part of our service deployed for the right customer at the right time. We've been investing for years now in our own internal processes and systems, and we'll continue to do that to modernize how we work. We've got a representation here on the slide of what we are doing, and we've indicated how, as we get these base systems and the data governance and other foundational layers complete, then we'll be able to move into the optimization and innovation of how we deliver.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

The timing of these investments, starting as we did around four or five years ago to plan and develop some of this, began with the implementation of a new finance system three or four years ago, a new database architecture and integration layers, now extending into a new service management system, which we implemented last year, and now into our sales system and a new HR platform. All of this comes just as these core platforms are beginning to embed AI in the way that they work. The creation of agents and agentic systems with the overlay of Copilot, which, as you know, we fully deployed a while ago across the organization, puts us in prime position to truly transform the ways that we at Softcat work in the years ahead.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

As I said, during the year, we started work on the deployment of Microsoft Dynamics as a replacement for our existing sales system. The latter had been in place for more than 20 years. We expect user testing on the new system to begin next year in the early summer. Ultimately, all of this work and investment is designed to enhance what I talked about before, an organizational approach to sales and customer excellence. The technology and tools that our salespeople, technical engineers, credit controllers, legal team, amongst many others, will have at their disposal will be contemporary and AI-enabled. As we look to scale our business in the U.K., in Ireland, in the U.S., and beyond, these investments will provide us with the operating platform to do what we do best: fantastic customer service delivered by a special team of people.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

These are the four aspects of our strategy going forward and a flavor of what we're doing within each to make Softcat an even better partner for our customers into the future. I'll finish by talking about where we will be deploying this approach and what we're doing in the different geographies that we're now operating in. This next slide shows the geographic range of our operations today. Despite having the largest share of the U.K. market and having created the presence that you can see on the page there, from the U.S. out to the Far East, despite all of that, we're not even yet in the top 10 globally in our industry today.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

That's great news because while the U.K. is and will remain a core focus and a market with more than enough opportunity in and of itself to perpetuate the growth rates that we have been delivering, despite that, the U.K. is now only one of the markets that our customers are asking us to do work for them in. As I mentioned earlier, we've made a great start in Ireland. We have a local team there selling to local customers. We will keep investing in that team, and I believe that we can aim to be the biggest player in that market one day. We also have an emerging presence in the U.S. with a team there now of around 20, growing in tenure. It's a mixture of new local hires and tenured Softcat U.K. exports. In that market, we are not yet selling to local customers.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

We are just delivering for existing U.K. and Irish multinationals. The culture in that team is already as strong and vibrant as in any of our U.K. offices, and we're developing some really good momentum. We've got lots of good options through which to keep building in the U.S., chief amongst them. The one certain way through which we will do it is by continuing to organically invest in the team and office that we've already got there. We also believe that Softcat could be a fantastic owner for an already established operation in the U.S. The evaluation of inorganic options there is something that we've previously described before as a no-lose effort because just by doing that work, by looking and evaluating, we are learning more about the market and how to build the existing team.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Our progress in the U.S. could continue to be a steady organic build, or we could accelerate it through acquisition. Either way, we've made a great start there. We've got the capability, capacity, and ambition to act if we see the right opportunity. Finding the right opportunity is the key phrase in that sentence. We've set a high bar, and finding a management team with an ethos aligned to ours, based around genuine care for their people and culture, like we did with Oakland, that's the non-negotiable part of it. Also, like with Oakland, I think we've shown that we can extend and accelerate our business through M&A. We will look for the chance to do that in the U.S.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

In addition to the plans we've got there in America, the U.K., and in Ireland, we'll also continue to build on the growing network of branches that we've established across the rest of the world in Canada, Europe, and Asia Pacific. We do now have an office of three people out in Singapore, but we'll keep developing the rest of the world fulfillment capability too. To summarize now, we've delivered, I think this year, another year of very strong performance. We bring fantastic forward momentum into this new financial year. We've refined how we think about the strategic priorities that will power this next exciting phase of growth for Softcat, and we've got really well-defined plans to invest across all of those. We are expanding the horizons over which we can deploy our model for future success.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

While we might enable new tools and new approaches in new markets, we will always have people and culture as our number one priority and principal driving force. Thank you again for your time and interest in Softcat today. We're happy to start taking questions now. We'll begin in the room, and then we'll open it up for anything that comes in on the lines as well. Let me go in and sit in that way. Morning, Andrew. You've got the mic.

[Andrew Ripper, Technology Equity Research Analyst at Lamiul Lurim]

Morning.

[Andrew Ripper, Technology Equity Research Analyst at Lamiul Lurim]

If it's working, yeah. Are we on? Just let you settle down. Thanks. It's Andrew Ripper from Pamiul Lurim. Good morning and well done on the results. A couple from me. Just on the numbers, you talked, Katy, in your section about FY 2026 being H1 weighted. I wonder if you could give us a sense of degree. I appreciate you've been very clear about the full year, both Inc. and EX, the exceptional deal in FY 2025, but to what degree do you expect, for example, GP growth to be H1 weighted this year? Thanks.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Sure. We don't give formal guidance, but to be helpful, happy to give a bit more color. It does assume that this large data center deal is recognized in H1, noting that there are dependencies on both the customer and the vendor. We expect GP and OP, the two-year growth rates, i.e., based on FY 2024, to be roughly the same H1-H2. That should give you for H1-OP growth something in the range of mid to high single digits and a slight OP decline in H2.

[Andrew Ripper, Technology Equity Research Analyst at Lamiul Lurim]

Thank you. Graeme, as you finished on sort of international strategy, just picking up on the U.S., you've had a fair amount of time looking at potential deals. Can you elaborate on how close you are or what your perspective is on potentially doing a deal? Have you found companies which would fit culturally, but you've not been able to agree on price, or are you not as close as that to potentially doing a deal? On the organic fronts, you made the point there that you'd done a great job with existing international customers. When do you get to the point organically that you start serving local businesses in the U.S.?

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Yeah. We've not to date got to the point where everything was right apart from price. We've done a lot of work to understand the market, to develop our own, I guess, scale and capability to the point where it is the right step. Obviously, we've got closer to that over time. I think we're in a position now where if we find the right thing, it would be a good step for Softcat to take. The main or the most clear element of what it would take is around the people, the leadership team wanting to be part of Softcat, having a culture that's generally based around people. The rest of the criteria for what might work for us in the U.S., we're all more open-minded about. The team that we have there, to the second part of your question, is kind of operating between the two.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

It is just working with existing customers, but it is now developing local relationships with those customers and therefore unearthing new opportunities in the local market, but we're not winning net new customers there. As I said, the one thing that we know we'll do is to keep investing in and building that team, and that will open more opportunities. When do you get to this crossover point of winning net new customers? I don't think organically we're at that point probably imminently. You can see why, therefore, this makes sense, because if there is an operation in the U.S., similar ethos to ours, would look at Softcat and think, "You'd be a great owner. You could accelerate us." It works for everybody. That's exactly what we found with Oakland. If and only if we see that, then we've got the ability to act. We don't need to.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

As I said, the U.K. and Ireland and the multinational aspects of the customers that we've got, there's more than enough for us to go out there, but we have the capacity. This is the right step if we find the right thing for us.

[Andrew Ripper, Technology Equity Research Analyst at Lamiul Lurim]

Just really quickly, just to finish off, Katy, back to you. Just in terms of the exceptional systems cost this year, GBP 20 million- GBP 25 million, I assume that's all cash. If you could just confirm that, do you expect some residual costs to flow into FY 2027?

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Happy to give a bit more color on those. The GBP 20 million- GBP 25 million has got two parts to it. The largest part is the system development work, which I'll come back to. There is also an element that's still Oakland. That deferred consideration, we accrue over the earnout period, which is three years. We've got intangible amortization over a similar time period, both of those sort of non-cash. They're staged payments, but they're not always cash within a year. The larger part is system costs. At the moment, we're focused on phase one of the project, and that phase one will run into FY 2027. We said that the peak spend is FY 2026, but then multi-year deals. Phase one in FY 2027 is very roughly half of the spend in FY 2026. Phase I focuses on the foundational elements of the system.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

We're trying to keep the initial scope as tight as we possibly can to minimize delivery risk. We'll then directly follow on with phase II, and phase II, and then phase III of the project. That will add in additional features. The exact scope and the spend will depend on the list of requirements and the return that these give. We'll decide that sort of when we're at the end of phase one. I guess as long as they are costs that we could have capitalized, had there not been this sort of nuance around SaaS-based licenses, then that's what we're treated as non-underlying. Hopefully that gives you a bit more flavor, and you're right, the systems are largely cash in year.

[Danon Jerry, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Hi, Danon Jerry from Peel Hunt. It's incredible to see the growth in sort of the larger deals. It's 46 deals above GBP 500,000. What I wanted to understand is that obviously when you talk about the exceptionally larger deals, the data center deals, I think there's an assumption, I think rightly, that they come initially at least lower margin. The deals that you're talking about here broadly, like those 46 deals, they come at more normative margins, I assume. Is that the correct answer?

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Yeah, I mean, there's a whole range, and it depends on the scale of the deals, one aspect, but the role that we're playing in the deal, how much advisory architecture work are we doing, how long's the project been going on for, what role do we have in implementation and support and management of the solution when it's up and running. Those larger solutions deals, they range across all five aspects of the tech proposition that we drew out, can involve different levels of service. The margin is a very broad range as well.

[Danon Jerry, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Graeme, tied to that, given that you have higher and higher CAGR basically as you go up the pyramid now, is there anything needed to change from a sales motion perspective to upsell to some of these existing customers? I guess it applies to these large data center deals as well if you are to make better profit from it. Is that motion already there?

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

No, so the short answer is yes. We are developing our sales motions because they're different in public sector, different in large customers, different in different technology areas, different depending on what each customer has in terms of skill set internally. Our playbook of sales motions is always expanding. As we've expanded it, it's developed into large complex customers, different areas, security assessments, data governance, and engineering network now as well. That's a good point. The sales motion around Oakland and the consultation they do extends our kit bag again, and it has benefits because we might learn that motion in that data center space, but then we can apply it in security and other spaces too. That has been one of our key strengths.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

A lot of this comes from the bottom up from our people seeing opportunities, saying, "Right, if we can do this," they create a best practice, they share it, and it develops across the business. New sales motions is definitely part of our growth.

[Danon Jerry, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Can I ask you one more question, please? I guess you've added 180 people on average, and you added through Oakland this kind of additional capability, and you've just alluded to the fact that that becomes quite important on a go-forward basis. Can we start to think of tuck-in acquisitions as almost acquires in essentially that 100 and like 150-200 range that you normally hire can now be thought of as a slightly higher range potentially because of M&A?

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

I mean, capability acquisitions like Oakland, we will, and again, it's hard to predict because you could foresee different situations as well, but we are looking to bring in capable people who want to be part of Softcat or energized by our culture. I think us thinking about M&A in that capability space as an acquirer is a reasonable mindset. Equally, if we bought something in the U.S., we'd be looking to retain and empower their people, not rip them out and replace it with Softcat people. We're not pretending that we can drop Softcat people in and engineer a complete change in culture. We need that cultural affinity and those people to be the anchor point in the first place.

[Tintin Stormont, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

Hi, Tintin Stortmont from Deutsche Numis. I'll do three, but they're really quick. In terms of the year just gone, if I adjust out the GBP 10 million in EBIT but gross it up on a gross profit basis, it still looks like sort of like 15% GP growth for the year, 12 and then sort of 17, 18 in the second half if I take off GBP 12.5 million in the GP in FY 2025. There's an acceleration still without the projects. Is there anything you would call out in terms of the environment and all of that?

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

I think something to be minded of is even in H2, we've taken out incremental contribution, but still some of the remaining growth is still the large deals that we've taken. Those other smaller but still large deals of above GBP 500,000 gross profit are also back half-weighted as well.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

The overarching performance on the base business was strong as well. It's sort of a combination of all of those three things too.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

What was behind that kind of run rate organic build in the second half? I mean, the device cycle certainly started to uptick in the second half, but it's still a relatively small part of our numbers, and it wasn't growing ahead of the rest of the business either. I think it's just I couldn't really call out a particular trend. I think it's just ebb and flow of when customer opportunities come up more than anything else.

[Tintin Stormont, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

Just a couple of quick ones on M&A. When you're looking at the U.S., you know you're developing a bit of M&A muscle with Oakland. When you think about 20 people in the U.S. and you're thinking about who you could potentially add, assuming it ticks the boxes, is there still a comfort range in terms of how big you want to go in terms of managing that risk?

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

I mentioned we're more open-minded on some of the other criteria apart from the people-centric culture. The right scale of operation that we could acquire, yeah, I think there's a fairly broad range to that. I don't think we want it to be too small because we want a team that's established and that we can empower and support. Equally, to your point, you don't want that to be too big as well because it probably does at some point start to bring bigger execution risk. There's a sweet spot there, but it's in quite a broad range for us.

[Tintin Stormont, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

Finally, just in terms of the systems, obviously quite a lot of work going in into 2026 and 2027. If you look back at the NetSuite, it was quite a big change too a couple of years ago. What were the learnings from that in terms of operational risk, in terms of kind of how you're managing the rollout for the sales and HR systems?

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Do you want to start?

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

I can, please.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Go on, mate.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

I wasn't here for NetSuite, so maybe you're better placed. NetSuite was probably the first and largest program that we did, so we had lots of learnings from it. Large IT projects are not easy. I think we've gone into the project knowing that, and we've put in the best team and governance that we possibly can, and we're being as mindful as we can. Sales teams have been involved hugely in the design, the scope, and that comms as well. The sort of heart and mind pieces are well underway as well. I'm sure it's not going to be easy. I don't think they ever are, but I think we've done everything that we possibly can to set ourselves up in the right way to do it.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Yeah, as Katy said, I mean, the NetSuite project was a successful implementation. We've also done ServiceNow implementation for our own internal IT and also our service operations. We've done a lot of database work, as we mentioned too. I think we've built up good and very recent capability around systems. We've invested in the delivery of this. We're working in close partnership with Microsoft on it. We chose together the partner with Microsoft that would do the implementation with us. The tightness of the three teams we brought together to do it, and again, learnings from NetSuite, getting our internal people pulled out and dedicated to the project, not as a side project, but we've got salespeople and specialists and people who use the existing system dedicated full-time to the delivery and configuration of this.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

When you get out of the textbook of how to do these things well, we have followed it, and we're doing it with people operating in that Softcat culture. I think we're giving ourselves the very best chance. Equally, the way that the delivery will be managed, there's a huge amount of attention gone into the de-risking of that as well. We're feeling very confident, but it's a big systems project, as you rightly point out. I think our approach to it and the learnings we've had recently should stand us in very good stead to do a good job.

[Charlie Brennan, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

It's Charlie Brennan here from Jefferies. Can I ask a couple of questions on the guidance? It feels like there's a lot going on. There's some non-recurring benefits from 25 of the large customer. It also sounds like there are some non-recurring costs from the Marlow write-off and FX costs. If I try and cut through all of the noise that I can't forecast particularly well, if you hadn't won any big deals, I would have expected guidance to be low double-digit gross profit growth and high single-digit EBIT growth. Let's call it 12% GP growth and 9% EBIT growth. You have won some large deals. We've got some of them in the balance sheet. Why isn't the two-year CAGR higher than 12% and 9%? That's question number one. Question number two is GBP 300 million still sounds like a big deal.

[Charlie Brennan, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Do we have to assume that you win one of those a year going forwards, or are we going to be sat here in 12 months' time with you talking about the non-recurrence of a big deal and a growth normalization in 2027?

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Okay. Let me answer the second one because it's the, I guess, easiest. Maybe it goes combined. The rate that we've got, so we've got, as you say, a very large deal in that majority falls into FY 2026. Some of it was in FY 2025, but it is more normalized and doesn't contribute as much as the element that was in FY 2025. We consider FY 2026 numbers to be sort of a normal base then run rates that we'd be able to expect to apply a normal growth framework to, say, the double-digit, low double-digit gross profit and the high single digit. No, we wouldn't expect to adjust that out. What we've tried to give you is the clarity of what we sort of deem incremental of those two large deals and the cumulative nature.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

I guess I'll go back to that two-year CAGR that is 12 and 9, and we're pretty confident in that as well.

[Charlie Brennan, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

It would have been 12 and 9 without the big deals. Where's the conservatism coming from? Why don't we see a higher two-year guide than 12 and 9?

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

I think those large deals have always played a part of us getting to the, let's call it 12% and 9%. We've done even better than that in FY 2025, which is what causes, I guess, the noise between the two years. You're right, there are one-off costs in there as well, hence that two-year CAGR. The FY 2026 run rate is much more normalized. If you look at the two years, it gets rid of all of the noise that you've got in FY 2025. Big deals are and always have been part of what we do. Now, whether in FY 2027 that will be lots more of above half or we'll have something really big, I don't know. From a sort of probability point of view, that's how we sort of look at that forward growth rate.

[Charlie Brennan, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Okay. I'll just sneak in a third one on competition dynamics. Were those two data center deals won in full competitive tender, or were they pre-selected based on historic relationships? When I think about the competition from those larger deals, I guess it's against the more global, more national players, whether it's a CDW or WWT or Computacenter. I guess everyone would point to breadth of capability if we were to speak to those larger players. What do you think your differentiation is against that more sophisticated competitor set?

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

I can't really think of many deals where we're not in a competitive situation. There are always competitors in the accounts we're working with. Individual deals might be less or more of a tender situation, but absolutely there's competition for those deals and those customers. When it comes to the confidence of a customer in a big solutions deal like that, there are many aspects to it. There's relationship and longevity of that relationship, human beings trusting each other. That's a huge factor. That's backed by technical skill and capability, which we've invested in chronically and have some amazing teams operating in great ways now to do that as well. There's geographic fulfillment reach, and it's always an art form and a combination of those things. We never want for good competition.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

There is a highly fragmented market. There are always good people out there, whether it's the names that you mentioned or other players. I think the progress we've made has shown that we at Softcat have been able to and have developed clearly our culture, and the customer service leads to good relationships. I've talked about the breadth and depth quality of our offering. We've talked about the geographic reach and the investment we've put into that. I think the combination of those things is what and how we can see to develop them further is what leads to the ambition that we're setting out to keep going further as well. We'll always have good competition. You can't win them all, and we don't.

[Oliver Tipping, Tech Research Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Oliver Tipping at Peel Hunter. I've just got a couple of quick questions. The first one is, given that you've got large multinationals pulling you into the U.S., will the U.S. client list lean towards larger enterprises, or will the mix be more reflective of the U.K mix?

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

It will trend towards the larger end of our mix just by dint of it tends to be larger organizations that have multinational operations. Yeah, slightly trending that way, but it does reflect the mix that we have as well. We have a lot of good mid-market customers pulling us out into the U.S. as well. Obviously, public sector is different, but in the corporate space, I think it'll be largely reflective of the U.K. If we take an inorganic step in the U.S, then depending on what we acquire, there'll be a slant there as well. No, it's reflective of the mix that we've got.

[Oliver Tipping, Tech Research Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Great, thank you. The second one is, I know you're expanding your internal services capabilities, but obviously compared to just selling a license where you can increase GP per head infinitely, there's only a limited number of hours in a day you can provide a service to someone. Does that have any impact on your growth of GP per head in the medium to long term?

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

You can look at the last 10 years for how this might pan out because we've been doing this for 15, 20 years building that service capability. What we've always said is we're not pivoting to be a service operation. We don't see software, hardware, services as different things. Our customers don't come to us talking about software, hardware, or services. They come to us talking about problems and solutions. Our service business has built at the same rate of the rest of our business. It's always been in that 14%-16% range of gross income. I think you should expect to continue to see that be the case. Who knows? We don't know because we don't, like I say, think about it like that. We follow what customers need, and the P&L will end up being what it will be.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Our margins and our margin profile has been pretty consistent over that time as well. I'd expect if you trend forward from what we've done over the last 10 years, you might see a similar path into the future as well.

[Oliver Tipping, Tech Research Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Great, thank you.

[Joe George, Equity Research Associate at JPMorgan]

Hi, guys. Joe George, JPMorgan. Just one from me, please. Just on the U.K. backdrop, can you talk a little bit about customer spending patterns there, particularly with regards to any trepidation into the upcoming budget and to what extent you've seen stable end market conditions there, please?

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

I think for the last couple of years, or two years ago, we sort of said that we were seeing a bit of a change, and things haven't got any easier. They haven't got harder either. We obviously didn't have the easiest budget last time around in general for the economy. I think it's fair to say we're just assuming it's the same kind of macroeconomic backdrop that we've seen over the last couple of years. That's what we've planned against, which seems a sensible assumption.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Maybe just two for me. One really quickly on headcount growth. What are your expectations for sort of next year or two?

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

I think we talked about this year was a moderation from what we've done over the last couple of years for multiple reasons. I think next year we'll pick up a little bit, but generally stay more muted. We're hoping now as we scale, we're investing a lot into IT and technology and systems. Therefore, that should allow us to scale with a still we'll be growing headcount, but not as much. I think the other dynamic though is the cost per head will continue to go up as we automate sort of more transactional work. We have to build out sort of core capabilities. I think that trend is what we would expect to see continue.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Yep, got it. Thanks. Maybe just one more on software revenue growth. It was 6%. I was just wondering what the gross profit growth was for software.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

The overall software was double digit. Basically, the GII to revenue is somewhat to do with front margin, and then depending on what you get in rebates, can bolster that. Therefore, the overarching growth was in line with everything else.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

Got it. Thanks.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

It looks like we might have reached the end of the questions in the room. I wonder if we've got any on the lines.

[Operator]

We have a question from Marjan Salaman from Channel Capital. Please go ahead.

[Marjan Salam, Analyst at Shore Capital]

Yes, good morning guys. Thanks very much for taking the question. I just had a quick one, if I could, on your market share, the 5% market share in the UK. Just in terms of pushing on towards high single digits and beyond, what sort of operational or strategic changes, if any, would be required to support that level of scale? Given the fragmented nature of the IT services market, is your market share ambition better served by continued organic expansion or leaning more into acquisitions like Oakland? Thanks.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Thank you. If we imagine a Softcat that has 10%, not 5% market share, the operational changes we need to make are none other than that which we've described in the presentation today about the things we're doing with our tooling, the further investment in new headcount, the offices, and the fabric of the buildings that we occupy, and that kind of thing. We're doing everything already in the plans we've laid out to be able to build the business of that nature. Is it better, can we get there through organic or inorganic? I mean, I think we've proven that we can do this and increment market share organically, and we will continue to do that. I have high confidence in our ability to do that. Acquisitions like Oakland could be a helpful part of how we do that.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Back to the question about is it an acquisition or is it an acquire, I mean, it's semantics, isn't it? Matter,

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

When we get customers telling us what they need from us, we see where vendors are moving to. We create organic plans to do that. If it's going to take a long time and we need to move faster, we can consider acquisitions to help us on that route. That is how we think about it. I don't think it's one or the other. It is likely to be a combination of both going forwards. I'd reiterate the high bar we've set on M&A, and that beginning around ethos and culture is a non-negotiable.

[Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO at Softcat]

I'd add to that, what's also helpful is that actually probably our market share has gone down a little bit. We've added into our TAM because of Oakland. We now play in slightly broader offering, and we've also added Ireland in as well that wasn't in there as well. We've got a lower market share there, so even more runway to grow.

[Marjan Salam, Analyst at Shore Capital]

That's great. Thanks very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. It appears there are currently no further questions. With this, I'd like to hand the call back over to the management team for closing remarks.

[Graeme Charlton, CEO at Softcat]

Thank you. As I said at the start, we really appreciate your time and attention on Softcat today. Thank you for listening to the results. We are really pleased with the performance we've had. We're more excited than ever, as we said, by the opportunity. We've got clear plans to address it. We look forward to keeping you posted on how we're doing. Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• Katy Mecklenburgh, CFO
• Graeme Charlton, CEO

Analysts

• Danon Jerry, Analyst at Peel Hunt
• Marjan Salam, Analyst at Shore Capital
• Charlie Brennan, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies
• Joe George, Equity Research Associate at JPMorgan
• Oliver Tipping, Tech Research Analyst at Peel Hunt
• Analyst
• Andrew Ripper, Technology Equity Research Analyst at Lamiul Lurim
• Tintin Stormont, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Numis