Disruption may be the most over-hyped word in the Tech lexicon, yet it is reshaping almost every walk of life. Even routine tasks - from cleaning restaurants, hospitals, food factories and public toilets, to maintaining schools, shops and leisure facilities - have been transformed by the ‘digital revolution’.
Checkit automates these processes, delivering unrivalled benefits in terms of efficiency, customer service, repeatability, transparency, safety and regulatory compliance. Moreover, its innovative SaaS solutions are applicable across many different verticals – with the potential of eventually becoming a global ‘category champion’. The objective now is to exploit this 1 st mover advantage, and rapidly scale the division.
This morning, Elektron took a major step forward towards achieving this goal. Announcing the £8.8m (cash/debt free) acquisition of Next Control Systems Ltd (NCS, see below). A leading UK (98% sales) remote monitoring, control, IoT and real time data analysis specialist - based in Fleet (Hampshire) and employing 104 staff.
NCS primarily serves the energy, facilities management, retail, education, and healthcare sectors under its Next, Axon and Tutela (healthcare and life sciences) brands. Typically saving clients up to 20% of their ongoing power, air-conditioning and refrigeration costs, along with protecting their often valuable inventories (eg drugs) from unscheduled equipment failures.
Here, customer retention is high, with 57% (£6.1m) of turnover (£10.7m 2018) said to be recurring - and the rest largely derived from implementation services, consultancy & associated hardware. What’s more, the £8.8m consideration means the transaction is immediately earnings enhancing and value accretive.
