Scotland’s Amor Group has been acquiring again as it continues on its mission to achieve £100m in revenues by 2013. The latest acquisition – Invisys – is a small, London-based healthcare IT firm. Invisys is led by a former radiographer, Tony Corkett, who will stay on to lead a new healthcare business unit within Amor’s public services sector team. According to Amor, the Invisys deal also ‘heralds the opening of a London base for Amor’ and furthers its international ambitions since Invisys has links with ‘key targets’ in Qatar.
Amor, which likes to be known as ‘Scotland’s largest business technology solutions company’, is on track to achieve £41m in revenues this year and has approaching 500 staff. Formed by an MBO two years ago, it is backed by investors Growth Capital Partners, Clydesdale Bank and Scottish Enterprise. Despite good organic growth – 10% last year – inorganic growth will be crucial if Amor is to achieve its ambitious £100m turnover target within two years. The terms of the Invisys acquisition were not disclosed, but it’s clearly another ‘tuck in’ purchase, much like the acquisition of ‘global managed services’ provider DW Technology Services in November last year (see Amor falls in love with DW). Prior to Invisys, Amor’s most recent purchase was the ‘multi-million’ pound acquisition of Manchester-based airport software specialist, FS Walker Hughes in the summer (see Amor aiming high with aviation buy).
Amor’s public sector team has had plenty to celebrate recently, signing £24m of deals in the last four months including a £18.5m contract to deliver the eProcurement Scotland Service (ePS) for the Scottish Government. But we remain to be convinced that the purchase of Invisys will do as much as Amor hopes to extend the Group’s reach into the healthcare sector. Invisys is a young company with experience in particular healthcare niches (e.g. it has RFID expertise, Infection Control Audit Management software and a PowSaver product). To our minds, Invisys would have made a neat addition to a SITS provider with existing business in the UK healthcare sector (and there is no shortage of those looking to acquire!), but its niche expertise and limited track record make it a less obvious candidate as a means to break into the NHS market, which in many ways is very different from the rest of the UK public sector.
If Amor is to achieve its ambition of becoming a cohesive £100m-turnover company in the next two years it will need to focus future acquisitions carefully and aim for at least one larger purchase. A host of Invisys-sized deals in diverse vertical markets, with offices in different regions and vague ambitions in different geographies would not be the recipe we’d choose to create a sustainable £100m SITS business.