Luxembourg-registered but essentially London-headquartered telco and IT services firm Colt finally managed to scratch its seven-year itch, reporting 3% revenue growth in 2012 to €1.59bn, the first headline increase in 7 years. Having said that, were they to have reported in sterling, at average FX rates this would have looked more like a 4% decline to £1.3bn. Operating profit was slashed by over 60% to €25.1m after an ‘accelerated’ restructuring charge of €32m announced in December (see Colt details cost savings plan).
There’s much happening ‘under the covers’ which warrants further scrutiny, so I will write more later. But there is one ‘interesting’ number that most other IT&C players don’t usually reveal – and that is the cost of their internal IT. For Colt, this was just under €40m in 2012, i.e. about 2.5% of revenues, down from 2.9% in 2011. That seems quite ‘lean and mean’ to me, given that IT&C services is their very business. But, as I say, few if any other players reveal this number.