Alphyra has disposed of its voice and data business in a €12m sale to Calyx. The new purchaser is Maurice Healy, a founder member of ITG which was renamed Alphyra last year. He has set up Calyx Ltd and Calyx Computers Ltd as the vehicles to buy this part of the business, which comprises ITG Computers, ITG Telecoms, Addex and WorkStations Training. The new entity will trade as Calyx, except for the division called Workstations Training.
Alphyra recently approved the sale of the voice and data business at an EGM, having decided to concentrate on electronic funds transfer and concluded that selling computers is no longer a core part of its business. The sale involved an initial cash payment of €8m, with the balance coming from €4m in loan notes.
Calyx has already seen a ‘significant’ return on investment in areas such as storage area networks and Citrix server-based computing. The company plans to become heavily involved in the enterprise computing market in the coming year and has partnered with IIP to gain a foothold in the Unix space.
Over the past two years, the company has seen revenue growth from maintenance, consultancy, managed services and training and it is optimistic of continuing this growth.
Turnover at the companies sold to Calyx was €60m for the year ended April 2001. However the voice and data businesses posted a reduction of 35 per cent in revenue to €22m for the half year ended October 2001.
There are 156 people employed at Calyx at a number of branch offices around the country. The company said that, having recently undergone a rationalisation programme, it is now aiming to expand. ‘As our business portfolio continues to grow, so too will our staff numbers,’ said Monica Hickey, who has been appointed as managing director of Calyx.
The company intends to expand through a combination of organic growth and acquisition, which is consistent with the strategy that saw ITG buy a number of IT resellers in the late 1990s.
In a related development, WorkStations Training revealed in January that it has acquired the Microsoft Technical and Applications training business of Global Knowledge. This is being operated on a partnership basis and from February 1st 2002, since when all of Global Knowledge’s Microsoft training courses are being delivered from WorkStations’ Dublin centre. Over time, Global Knowledge plans to move out of its existing facility and will share space at WorkStations’ Dublin premises.
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