The fast-growing firm declared £34.3 million turnover in 2015 and is on target to achieve £40 million in 2016 through a combination of securing new business and maintaining high customer retention. UKFast CEO Lawrence Jones MBE puts the continued success of the firm he started in a back bedroom in 1999 down to delivery of high-level customer service.
He said: “We’re in a fantastic position, being big enough to deliver solutions for large enterprises, but small enough to guarantee exemplary British customer service. Businesses running eCommerce and mission-critical infrastructure need to pick up the phone and know they’ve got a great organisation behind them and people who are accountable.
“More than 60 per cent of our growth last year came from our existing customers growing their businesses and developing their solutions with us, which is something we’re incredibly proud of. We hear time and again that our services are key to our client’s growth so we’ll keep working hard to deliver for them.
“It’s clear that the model is working because we’ve welcomed some incredible brands to UKFast this year. Last year we were delighted to secure a contract with our biggest ever client and this year we’ve beaten that figure three times over and are working on even bigger deals again.
“Alongside all of this, the public sector arm of our business is beginning to really develop and we expect it to deliver huge results in coming years.”
The growth spurt sees the hosting firm on track for EBITDA of £19 million in 2016, following increased investment in personnel and hardware.
UKFast, which ranked as the 5th Best Workplace in the Great Place to Work list, has now grown its team to over 300 and continues to recruit for roles in tech support, marketing, account management and sales.
Jones said: “We’ve invested heavily in our colocation environment in Manchester and it’s proving to be a very popular choice for businesses who want geographic diversity in their solution and in their backups. We’re doing things that other colocation providers just don’t do, like building hotel rooms within our data centre complex for engineers working overnight.
“The focus for the second half of the year is on creating an unbeatable service and an unrivalled offering. Of course it’s important that we create profit because we’re going to build new data centres and invest heavily in R&D, plus we’re continuously expanding the team.”
Jones is delivering growth across his whole business portfolio, as his cyber security firm Secarma announced the acquisition of application security specialists Pentest Ltd in July. The move adds a 50-strong team of ethical hackers and a list of blue chip clients to Jones’ firm.