Aussie MSP Interactive cracks $182 million under new CEO Mal McHutchison

Melbourne-headquartered managed service provider Interactive has added another $14.6 million on top of its annual revenue in its first year under new chief executive Mal McHutchison.

The company maintained its position as one of Australia's biggest homegrown MSPs with revenue growing 8.7 percent to reach $182.4 million for the year ending 30 June 2018, up from $167.8 million the previous year.

Net profit took a dip to $2.7 million, down from $11.5 million the previous year, though profit was impacted by a number of factors including termination related payments and restructuring costs, which Interactive didn't expand on in its financial report.

Interactive, which specialises in managed services, hardware maintenance, data centre, business continuity and cloud, marked its 30th year in business in 2018, having been founded in 1988 to offer third-party hardware maintenance for IBM equipment.

At the beginning of the financial year, managing director Christopher Ride stepped down from the position after 25 years at the helm to make way for McHutchison, a former Macquarie Capital executive.

"This has had the effect of helping the business accelerate its growth and future plans while also allowing Christopher a well-earned opportunity to extend his association with Interactive as a member of our board of directors," a spokesperson for Interactive said.

"Mal’s time at Interactive so far has been widely recognised by customers and staff as deepening our focus on customer intimacy, attracting a number of very talented and experienced executives to our business and helping us progress our ambitions to be the leader in several of our key areas of operation."

Interactive also hired its first CIO in Nick Scholefied, who previously worked as CIO for investment and trustee group Perpetual, and a new CFO in Belinda Cooney, another former Macquarie Capital director.

These weren't the only new hires last year. Interactive's headcount grew by another 100 staff, reaching 538 at the end of the financial year. 

The Interactive spokesperson told CRN that underlying earnings were flat mostly due to the decision to bring on new staff. These new staff were hired primarily to support Interactive's multi-cloud offerings, which includes migrating, securing monitoring and managing public and private cloud environments.

"We expect this investment to enable us to continue the development of our multi-cloud strategy and also ensure we are not diminishing our commitment to our customers’ success," the spokesperson said.

Another major highlight was the acquisition of asset disposal specialist EraseIT in February, a company previously owned by Ride. The acquisition saw all 26 EraseIT staff join Interactive, as well as the 650 customers it services in Australia with secure erasure and safe destruction of sensitive customer data.

Interactive also developed a software-as-a-service marketplace in August intended to offer Aussie SaaS providers a single platform for connecting them to the MSPs SMB clients. The company also works with Dicker Data for distribution of its hardware management services.

"We believe our strong performance over the last financial year further demonstrates the veracity of our strategy and, with the support of our 2500 customers, we’re continuing to invest in and extend our capabilities," the spokesperson said.

"As we enter our 30th year of providing IT services, we have seen many changes in the market. We continue to evolve our service offerings and expand our alliances with organisations such as Cisco, NetApp, Microsoft and others to ensure we can provide the highest-standard of service delivery."