Brit biz Phoenix IT Group confirms £16m of contract wins

Early signs of turnaround pumps shares price

A flurry of biz wins worth more than £16m were this morning confirmed by the new CEO at Phoenix IT Group - the man brought in to turn the loss-making British firm into a profit generating machine.

Former EDS and Synstar exec Steve Vaughan, was hired in March to design a turnaround plan, which includes the, er, mind-blowing strategy of winning over new customers in the Managed Services arm, which it has.

The Northampton-based group said South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Trust Foundation have signed a five-year IT services contract in a bid to "improve the experience of NHS service users".

The company provided little other detail on the nature of the services being provided but said the Trust would "become one of the three biggest clients for our Managed Services division".

The Partner division, which provides a range of support, maintenance and break-fix services on behalf of third party tech firms, has also got something to shout about - the deal with BAE Systems Applied Intelligence (formerly Detica) has been expanded.

The first contract under a master framework was penned last September to roll out services as part of a Service Integration and Management gig with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The "scope" has been expanded to included two additional government agencies.

"Phoenix will implement support desk systems and run these to defined service levels for a period of three and five years respectively," the LSE-listed company said in statement to the City.

The Phoenix CloudSure UK public cloud service, billed by the company as yet another "strategic goal", is now hosting its first "live customer" – with others waiting in the wings to get up and running.

The third and final division, Business Continuity, has renewed a contract with its second largest customer, a global bank, for an further three years with dedicated and syndicated seat recovery and other "resilience" services.

Phoenix is fighting back after several disastrous years, and as revealed by El Chan last week has inked a deal with Huawei to become the second Gold-accredited partner in the UK. This builds on the award of a Platinum accreditation from HP and a Gold badge from Avaya.

These moves were a bid to replace revenues lost when Cisco gave Phoenix, along with around 1,000 other suppliers, their marching orders last autumn claiming they had flouted its Ts&Cs.

In a statement, Vaughan said:

"I am pleased to announce this update, representing orders valued at over £16m, which demonstrates we're off to an early but encouraging start with our new strategy. The task ahead is to ensure we translate these early, individual proof points into sustained momentum."

The market have responded positively to the contract wins, with Phoenix's share price bouncing by nearly nine per cent to 95 pence. ®