Jaywing sells contact centre to focus on core offering

Jaywing is to sell off its loss-making contact centre business HSM as the group seeks to simplify its business and concentrate on its core data science offering.
Bidco, which is backed by private equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners LLC, has acquired HSM in a £500,000 deal, on a cash-free, debt-free basis.
In its last accounts, for the year ended March 31 2018, HSM recorded a £30,000 pre-tax loss on revenues of £6.03m.
Jaywing has also entered into a three-year services agreement with Bidco, which will provide the agency with a minimum of £360,000 during the period.
The move comes as Jaywing’s financial results for the six months to September 30 2018 show pre-tax losses widened from £309,000 to £743,000, with revenue falling from £23.5m to almost £22m.
However, Jaywing chairman Martin Boddy was upbeat, claiming that the group had seen “momentum build quarter on quarter this year, particularly at performance marketing division Epiphany”.
He added: “The disposal of HSM is an important non-core asset disposal, which will allow management to concentrate entirely on developing its core business and will simplify the Jaywing offering.
“Following the disposal, we will operate as a consultancy, an agency and a technology business all under-pinned by data science. Our skill is to combine these to create solutions that our clients find indispensable. We call this our ‘One Jaywing’ model, a model which is now being utilised with over two-thirds of our top 50 clients.”