Brennan IT cracks $100 million revenue in its 20th year

Brennan IT has cracked $100 million revenue in its 20th year in business – it’s “highest revenue result ever”.

The Sydney-headquartered managed service provider turned over $106 million in the 2017 financial year to 30 June, a near-14 percent rise from 2016.

Even more impressive, according to chief executive Stephen Sims, was the profit increase of more than 26 percent year-on-year.

The result “exceeded expectation in revenue and profit”, Sims told CRN.

“We had our highest revenue result ever – we cracked $100 million for the first time. In fact, we did around $106 million. That is a milestone for us; last year was about $92 million.”

Sims added that the IT firm did “very impressive” profit growth of more than 26 percent year on year.

The highly profitable result was thanks to strong performance in “core annuity-based services”, such as managed IT services, managed cloud, managed voice and data networking.

Brennan, which has built its business servicing midmarket clients of 50 to 1000 seats, secured “a couple of big new logo wins” with major clients, said Sims, though he would not reveal company names.

Sim's tenure as CEO has included a series of key hires at Brennan, including the appointment of its first-ever chief information officer, Simon Wheeler and hiring its first head of partners and channel, Andrew Borthwick.

Dayle Wilson joined Brennan IT at the start of the year after more than a decade at Macquarie Telecom, including two years as CTO. Wilson has been named chief officer of operations at Brennan.

The revenue achievement comes in Brennan’s 20th year in business and 18 months after Sims took over as the chief executive from founder Dave Stevens.

Stevens, who continues as the MSP's non-executive chairman, built Brennan into one of the most recognisable names in the Australian IT channel. The company was the first-ever winner of the CRN Fast50 Icon award in 2014, as voted by that year’s fastest-growing companies.

The company has grown to a team of more than 400 employees, servicing more than 1000 customers across various industries, including Local Government Super, Guide Dogs, Forever New, and Strandbags.

“I inherited a great business from Dave. It was already in good shape, a very lucky position to be in,” said Sims.

Dave Stevens said: “Brennan IT was built to service the Australian midmarket. At the time we started the company, medium-sized businesses were really underserviced in IT, it was difficult for them to access high-quality technology, knowledge and services. We identified a gap in the market, to provide enterprise-grade solutions at affordable rates.

“As Brennan IT is a midmarket company, we know our clients’ pain points because we have the same ones. We know what businesses need to be able to grow from a small company to a medium-sized one as we have done it ourselves," he added.

Stevens has continued to be active in the mergers-and-acquisitions space, including acquiring half of Fast Track Technology earlier this year, as well as privately building consultancy State of Matter to $9 million of revenue in its first year.

The $100 million club

The 2017 revenue result puts Brennan into a small group of Australian resellers and MSPs to have broken the $100 million barrier.

Thomas Duryea Logicalis reached turnover of $126 million after the combination of the Melbourne-born reseller with global IT solutions provider Logicalis in 2015.

Interactive generated revenue of $159.2 million in 2016, while Brisbane-headquartered Dialog Group hit revenue of  $181 million. Ethan Group turned over $175 million in 2016.

The largest Australian-owned reseller is Data#3, which is expected to break through the billion-dollar barrier when it publishes its annual report to the ASX next month.