Interim Results

Maintel Holdings Plc

("Maintel", the "Company" or the "Group")

Interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2025

Resilient performance, as projects and pipeline progress build momentum for future growth

Maintel Holdings Plc, a leading provider of cloud and managed communication services, announces its unaudited interim results for the six months to 30 June 2025.

Key Financial Information

Financial Highlights

· Group revenue was in line with expectations at £46.5m, (H1 2024: £46.6m), with recurring revenue representing 74.3% of total revenue (H1 2024: 78.7%).

· Total revenue was relatively flat compared with the first half of 2024 due to a small number of churned contracts as previously flagged, which offset a 20% growth in revenue from projects and the benefit from price increases.

· Gross profit decreased to £14.0m (H1 2024: £14.7m) with gross margin decreasing to 30.1% (H1 2024: 31.6%), driven by in-bound inflationary pressure and a change in revenue mix, as H1 2024 benefited from higher margin upfront project revenue from a large contract won with a housing association.

· Adjusted EBITDA decreased by 29.2% to £3.4m (H1 2024: £4.8m), reflecting the increased employer costs, increased investment in IT systems and marketing in H1 2025 to accelerate the momentum in business development. Adjusted EBITDA margin decreased to 7.2% (H1 2024: 10.2%).

· Basic loss per share at 5.5p (H1 2024: earnings per share at 0.5p) flows from the reduction in the profitability of operations, whereas restructuring costs, amortisation of intangibles, and the interest charge decreased in the period.

· A new financing facility with HSBC was signed in March 2025, for 39 months to July 2028.

· Net debt increased to £18.0m (H1 2024: £15.6m) as a result of the lower cashflow generated from operations of £2.2m (H1 2024: £6.6m) due to the timing of working capital and interest payments, partly compensated by lower capital expenditure.

Operational Highlights

· Routes to market have been expanded to include physical events, digital campaigns, advertising, vendor deals, industry and technology forum membership, and independent consultants, which are already bearing results.

· During H1 2025, the Company fully established its new customer acquisition sales team, which is crucial to Maintel's ability to grow its customer base and has already generated a significant pipeline and closed several early deals.

· The sales pipeline reached a record high, climbing to £75 million First Year Value[5] at the end of H1 2025 (H1 2024: £50m).

· Over £20 million in Total Contract Value (TCV) of new business sales bookings from both existing and new customers were closed during H1 2025, including an internationally distributed on-premise Unified Communications managed service for a significant central government contract, a Hybrid Wide Area Networking upgrade for one of the UK's leading providers of affordable dental care, a new private cloud Unified Communications managed service for South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, and a Wi-Fi refresh project for a large retailer.

· Maintel won three awards recognising the success of Maintel's rebranding and repositioning.

· New collaboration solutions powered by Zoom are now marketed to existing and new customers, with a new project won with a newly acquired housing association customer.

· Excellent progress has also been made across both employee and customer experience scores, execution of the Company's customer retention strategy, and in continuing to build and strengthen our leadership team.

· Following the end of the period the Company appointed Stephen Beynon as Non-Executive Chair in August, completing the composition of the Board of Directors. In addition, the operational board has been further strengthened through the appointment of Sarah Roberts as Chief Operating Officer.

Commenting on the Group's results, Dan Davies, Chief Executive Officer said:

"Maintel delivered a resilient performance in the first half of 2025, with continued progress across our transformation programme and strategic focus areas. We saw encouraging momentum in our core technology pillars and entered the second half with the largest sales pipeline we've seen in recent years.

"The ongoing transformation of our organisational structure, cost base, ways of working and operational efficiency are all progressing as planned, ensuring that we are ready to deliver efficiently when the execution of our growth strategy comes to fruition.

"We are committed to building long-term differentiation in the market, optimising our operating model, and delivering sustainable growth, profitability, and cash generation."

Notes

[1] Adjusted EBITDA is EBITDA of £2.9m (H1 2024: £3.7m), adjusted for exceptional items (including one-off restructuring costs) and share based payments (note 6).

[2] Adjusted earnings per share is basic loss per share of 5.5p (H1 2024: earnings per share of 0.5p), adjusted for intangibles amortisation, exceptional items and share based payments (note 5). The weighted average number of shares in the period was 14.4m (H1 2024: 14.4m).

[3] Interest bearing debt (excluding issue costs of debt and excluding IFRS 16 debt) minus cash.

[4] Adjusted profit before tax of £1.8m (H1 2024: 3.2m) is basic loss before tax, adjusted for intangibles amortisation, exceptional items and share based payments.

[5] First Year Value consists in the project revenue and the first 12 months' recurring revenue

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Notes to editors

Maintel Holdings Plc ("Maintel") is a leading provider of cloud, networking and security managed communications services to the UK public and private sectors. Its services aim to help its clients operate at the highest level by designing, implementing, innovating and managing their vital digital communication solutions, with a focus across three strategic pillars:

· Unified Communications and Collaboration - Making customers' people more effective, efficient, and collaborative with UC&C technology. The core focus of this pillar is the high growth Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) market segment.

· Customer Experience - Helping customers to acquire, delight and retain their customers using customer experience technology. The core focus of this pillar is the high growth Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) market segment.

· Security & Connectivity - Securely connecting customers' people, partners and guests to their cloud platforms, applications, and data with secure connectivity, and protecting their business from cyber threat. The core focus of this pillar is the high growth Software Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN), Security Service Edge (SSE) and Cyber Managed Service market segments.

Maintel combines technology from its strategic, global technology vendor and carrier partners, with its own Intellectual Property, deployed from and managed by its own platforms, to provide seamless solutions that its customers can consume without the need for the internal skillset required to deploy and manage the technology themselves.

Maintel serves the whole market, with a particular focus on key verticals of Financial Services, Retail, Public Healthcare, Local Government, Higher Education, Social Housing and Utilities. Its core market constitutes organisations with between 250 and 10,000 employees in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors with headquarters in the UK.

The Company was founded in 1991 and it listed on London's AIM market in 2004 (AIM: MAI).

BUSINESS REVIEW

Overview

Maintel delivered a resilient performance in the first half of 2025, with continued progress across its transformation programme and strategic focus areas. The Group saw encouraging momentum across its core technology pillars of Unified Communications & Collaboration, Security & Connectivity, and Customer Experience and entered the second half with the largest sales pipeline seen in recent years.

An encouraging 20% growth in project-related revenue, which typically precedes associated recurring revenues, was offset by a contraction in the recurring revenue base due to a small number of churned contracts as flagged in January's trading update. As a result, revenue was flat compared with the first half of 2024, however, increased employer costs and strategic investments in IT and marketing hampered the Adjusted EBITDA performance.

The ongoing transformation of the Group's organisational structure, cost base, ways of working and operational efficiency are all progressing as planned, ensuring that the Group is ready to deliver efficiently when the execution of its growth strategy comes to fruition. The continued reduction in exceptional costs, as organisational transformation reaches its final phases in 2025 and 2026, will also ultimately benefit cash flow and deleveraging ambitions.

The continued improvement in the key leading indicators of pipeline generation, win rates and customer and employee satisfaction results are pleasing to see, although more time is required before this will benefit the P&L performance due to delays in pipeline conversion and the expected delivery lag of large enterprise scale deployments.

Post the period-end, two significant contracts were secured: a nationwide SD-WAN managed service for a leading UK retailer and a managed Local Network & Wi-Fi solution for a major county police force. Together, these represent a total contract value of £9.7 million and reinforce the Group's position as a trusted provider of secure, scalable communications infrastructure. These added to the key wins highlighted in the first half of the year and, combined with an encouraging reduction in churn rates, all bode well for the recurring revenue levels of future years. 

As previously announced, the second half has seen delays in pipeline conversion and the loss of a key opportunity, which will impact the Group's full-year performance, nonetheless, the Board remains confident of achieving the revised guidance.

Despite these challenges, the strategic direction remains clear. The Board is committed to building the Group's long-term differentiation in the market, optimising its operating model, and delivering sustainable growth, profitability, and cash generation. Maintel has an exceptional team, and the Board would like to thank them for their continued commitment to the Group's core values and customers.

Group revenue was in line with expectations, broadly in line with the first half of 2024, at £46.5m (H1 2024: £46.6m). Project revenue grew by 20.4% to £12.0m (H1 2024: 9.9m) supported by the implementation of a large SD-WAN infrastructure and the deployment of an Aruba solution for a large retailer. Recurring revenue decreased by 5.9% to £34.5m (H1 2024: 36.7m) following the pre-announced churn of a small number of contracts. As a consequence, recurring revenue as a proportion of total revenue was 74.3% (H1 2024: 78.7%).

Project and on-premise managed services division revenues declined by 1.7% to £21.3m (H1 2024: £21.7m), predominantly due to expected churn of some specific heritage on-premise telephony and contact centre contracts, as alluded to earlier in the year. Technology revenues increased by 20.4% to £12.0m (H1 2024: £9.9m) largely compensating for the reduction in the managed services revenue. This strong performance reflected the delivery of the upfront element of contracts won in the second half of 2024 and early 2025, which reflected the success of the strategic repositioning of the Group as a specialist in communications services. The growth in the first half of 2025 wholly derives from the acceleration in business generation since 2024, whereas revenue in 2023 benefited from the delivery of delayed orders booked in 2021 and 2022.

Our Network Services benefited from the growth in Data Connectivity Services and Cloud revenue. Recurring revenues for Security & Connectivity Services increased by 5.2% to £10.6m (H1 2024: £10.0m), driven by the continued delivery of new SD-WAN and Security contracts. Security & Connectivity Services joins Cloud Communications Services as the Group's two key growth areas with the largest win so far this year and continued strong growth potential. In the Period, the revenue of our private and public cloud platforms increased by 2.5%. Maintel has continued to grow its Cloud services revenue across unified communications and contact centre applications. Delivery of the Group's Cloud contracts remained strong, with an increase in recurring revenue of £8.1m (H1 2024: £7.9m).

Regarding cost management, the Group constantly reviews its organisation to ensure it has a scalable and efficient business which facilitates our strategy as a digital communications specialist. This resulted in a 2.4% reduction in our headcount in H1 2025. To date, investment in business development, increased employment costs and inflation in some general costs have adversely impacted the Group's results.

Adjusted EBITDA decreased to £3.4m (H1 2024: £4.8m). Gross margin has been impacted by continued inflationary pressures, while project mix was less favourable, and general costs evolved slightly adversely, as described above. This resulted in an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 7.2% (H1 2024: 10.2%).

The cash conversion reflected the reduction in the cash in-flows from operating activities to £2.2m (H1 2024: £6.6m), as well as the timing of interest payments. The Group however continues to reduce its contracted financial debt, and pursues its strategy to deleverage the business, further strengthening its financial position.

The Group incurred a loss before tax of £0.8m (H1 2024: loss of £0.3m) and loss per share of 5.5p (H1 2024: profit per share of 0.5p). This includes a net exceptional charge of £0.4m (H1 2024: £1.0m) (refer to note 8) and intangibles amortisation of £2.1m (H1 2024: £2.4m). 

Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) decreased by 89.1% to 1.2p (H1 2024: 11.0p) based on a weighted average number of shares of 14.4m (H1 2024: 14.4m).

Review of operations

Maintel is a Managed Services Provider, with a focus on three, core strategic technology pillars; Unified Comms & Collaboration, Customer Experience and Security & Connectivity.

Our Maintel purpose is to use technology to create customer experiences, services and workplaces that inspire and empower people.

We become trusted insiders within our clients' organisations. An embedded partner working in close collaboration to deliver their workplace, service and customer experience strategies. We consult on the design, deploy and manage solid technology solutions - mission critical infrastructure, platforms and applications that ensure our clients businesses run efficiently and securely, achieving their ambitions, while always being ready to adapt.

The following table shows the performance of the three operating segments of the Group.

Project and on-premise managed services comprise two distinct revenue lines:

· Project revenue: all non-recurring revenues from hardware, software, professional and consultancy services and other non-recurring sales.

· On-premise managed services: all support and managed service recurring revenues for hardware and software located on customer premises. This combines both legacy PBX and Contact Centre systems, which are in a managed decline across the sector as organisations migrate to more effective and efficient cloud solutions, with areas of technology such as Local Area Networking (LAN), WIFI and security, which are still very much current and developing technology areas and therefore enduring sources of revenue.

These services are predominantly provided across the UK, with some customers having international footprints. The division also supplies and installs project-based technology, and professional and consultancy services to the Group's direct clients and through its partner relationships.

Divisional revenue decreased by 1.7% to £21.3m (H1 2024: £21.7m). Revenue from the legacy on-premise managed service business decreased by £2.4m, in line with the expected churn of a few specific accounts and as previously alluded to, counteracted by a 20.4% growth in project revenues.

The growth in project revenue reflected the delivery of large projects won in H2 2024, and H1 2025. The associated recurring revenue streams will start to be recognised in H2 2025.

The gross margin decreased to 20.6% in H1 2025 (H1 2024: 26.0%) as the project margin in 2024 benefited from the delivery of a high margin one time component of a specific project, whereas the margin of the managed services decreased following unfavourable contracts mix.

Network services division

Network Services is made up of three strategic revenue lines:

· Cloud communications services: subscription and managed service revenues from cloud based Unified Communications and Contact Centre contracts

· Security and connectivity services: subscription, circuit, co-location and managed service revenues from Wide Area Network (WAN), Software Defined-WAN (SD-WAN), Internet access and managed security service contracts

· Voice network services: recurring revenues from both legacy PSTN voice and modern Voice over IP (VoIP) based SIP Trunking contracts

Network services revenue grew by 1.0% and gross margin grew to 37.3% (H1 2024: 36.5%). This revenue growth reflects the steady growth in data connectivity services recurring revenue, up 5.2% and the positive contribution from the continued growth in cloud subscription and managed service revenue, up 2.5%. The growth performance of the division reflects the Group's success in winning and rolling out large Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) and Security managed service contracts in the last few years, and the durable retention of those contracts.

Line rental revenue decreased by 8.8%, in line with the trend reported in previous years. The continued growth of the Group's SIP Trunking services partly compensates the impact of the progressive migration away from the legacy BT based PSTN services, with the deadline for the end of this service set to 2027. Call traffic revenues remain consistent at £1.5m (H1 2024: £1.5m).

Maintel has continued to grow its cloud services revenue across unified communications and contact centre applications. Delivery of the Group's Cloud contracts remained strong, with an increase in recurring revenue of 2.5% to £8.1m (H1 2024: £7.9m). During H1 2025, the Group closed a number of additional new key contracts for the future in both the Private and Public cloud spaces.

The expansion of the gross margin of the division to 37.3% (H1 2024: 36.5%) resulted from the positive mix in the new contracts and the price increases applied to existing contracts.

Mobile division

Mobile revenue remained consistent at £1.6m (H1 2024: £1.6m). Gross profit was £0.8m (H1 2024: £0.6m), and gross margins was higher at 49.5% (H1 2024: 37.7%). The level of the margin was primarily due to the timing of bonuses and one time elements earned in H1 2025, compared with H1 2024. The modest growth in the division reflects the refocus of business development towards our focus revenue streams, and the timing of contract renewals.

O2 continues to be the Group's core partner and route to market, bolstered by its Vodafone agreement and its more recent relationship with Three, which enhances Maintel's commercial offering as well as increases its ability to serve customers more effectively and efficiently. Lastly, the Company's own Maintel Managed Mobile wholesale offering is ideal for customers who require an agile solution that caters for unique billing, network, and commercial requirements.

Maintel's mobile go-to-market proposition will continue to focus on the mid-market and low-end enterprise segments where the Group's mobile portfolio is best suited, whilst the product remains an adjacent offering to the Company's core strategic pillars.

Administrative expenses 

Administrative expenses primarily comprise costs related to the sales and marketing teams, support functions and managerial positions, as well as the associated growth generated by investments and general costs. The total other administrative expenses, excluding depreciation, amounted to £11.7m (H1 2024: £11.1m), an increase of £0.6m. This increase mainly reflected the increased costs of employment, the inflation on some general costs including commercial insurance, and early investment in business development costs to yield results in the second half of the 2025 and beyond.

The overall headcount reduced by 2.4% or 11 FTEs and now stands at 441 (H1 2024: 452) as a result of the Group's constant review of its organisational structure as mentioned above and re-adapting to a scalable, efficient business to facilitate our strategy as a communications specialist.

Cash flow

The Group's net debt (excluding issue costs of debt and excluding IFRS 16 liabilities) was £18.0m at 30 June 2025, compared with £16.6m net debt at 31 December 2024.

The Group generated £2.2m of cash from operating activities (H1 2024: £6.6m).

Capital expenditure was £1.6m (H1 2024: £2.8m), driven by our continued investment across Maintel's product and service portfolio and delivery platforms, while the H1 2024 reflected the timing of client related capital expenditure.

No tax was paid in the first half of the financial year.

Dividends

In line with previous periods, the Board has decided to continue to pause dividend payments. As such, the Board will not declare an interim dividend for 2025 (H1 2024: Nil).

Although the Board remains focused on the reduction of the Group's debt and does not feel it is timely to resume dividend payments, this will be kept under review as conditions further improve.

The Board

Post-period end, on 26 August 2025, the Company was pleased to announce the appointment of Stephen Beynon as Non-Executive Chair after a thorough and considered process. The Board is pleased to be once again following best practice with regard the role of Chairman but remain of the belief that taking a measured approach was in the best interests of the Company to ensure the right candidate was chosen. Stephen's background and skill set will be of great benefit in taking the Company to the next stage of its strategic direction and organisational transformation plans.

Stephen has over 30 years' experience leading telecoms and energy businesses, including running the B2B division of Virgin Media in the UK and Optus in Australia. Most recently, he was co-President of Eutelsat's Connectivity Business and CEO of its Low Earth Orbit satellite subsidiary OneWeb.

Outlook

As announced previously, while the Company entered the second half of the year with its largest sales pipeline for many years, it has experienced delays in pipeline closures and the loss of a significant key new deal for the year. As a consequence, the Board revised their expectations for FY 2025, now expecting revenue to be around £95.0m, with slightly unfavourable gross margin levels due to the remaining revenue mix. Adjusted EBITDA is now expected to be around £7.0m.

The Board remains committed to its specialist communications Managed Service Provider strategy and the continued transformation programme, and it is confident that in combination this will ultimately support the Company's return to sustainable growth, profitability and cash generation. The Board believes the Group's focus on continuing to build differentiation in the market and optimising our operating models for growth will enable the Company to deliver longer term increase in shareholder value, and remain confident in achieving the revised guidance.

On behalf of the Board

Dan Davies

Chief Executive Officer

18 September 2025

Consolidated statement of comprehensive income

for the six months ended 30 June 2025

Consolidated statement of financial position

at 30 June 2025

Consolidated statement of changes in equity (unaudited)

for the six months ended 30 June 2025

Consolidated statement of cash flows

for the six months ended 30 June 2025

Maintel Holdings Plc

Notes to the interim financial information

1. General information

Maintel Holdings Plc is a public company limited by shares and is incorporated and domiciled in the UK, England. Its shares are publicly traded on the AIM market. Its registered office and principal place of business is 5th Floor, 69 Leadenhall Street, London, EC3A 2BG. Its registered company number is 03181729.

2. Basis of preparation

The financial information in these unaudited interim results is that of the holding company and all its subsidiaries (the Group). The financial information for the half-years ended 30 June 2025 and 30 June 2024 does not comprise statutory financial information within the meaning of s434 of the Companies Act 2006 and is unaudited. It has been prepared in accordance with the recognition and measurement requirements of UK adopted International Accounting Standards (IAS) but does not include all the disclosures that would be required under IAS. The accounting policies adopted in the interim financial statements are consistent with those adopted in the last annual report for the financial year 2024 and those applicable for the year ended 31 December 2025.

As permitted, this Interim Report has been prepared in accordance with the AIM Rules for Companies and is not required to comply with IAS 34 'Interim Financial Reporting'. The presentation currency of the Group is Pound Sterling, and all amounts have been rounded to the nearest thousand unless otherwise stated.

In the application of the Group's accounting policies, management is required to make judgements, estimates and assumptions about the carrying amounts of certain assets and liabilities.

Estimates and judgements as applied to items, including impairment of non-current assets, research and development costs, timing of service revenue recognition, allocation of the transaction price against the performance obligations, recoverability of the deferred tax asset and exceptional items have not materially changed since the year end.

3. Segmental information

For management reporting purposes and operationally, the Group consists of three business segments: (i) project and on-premise managed services, (ii) network services, and (iii) mobile services. Each segment applies its respective resources across inter-related revenue streams which are reviewed by management collectively under these headings. The businesses of each segment and a further analysis of revenue are described under their respective headings in the business review.

The chief operating decision maker has been identified as the Board, which assesses the performance of the operating segments based on revenue and gross profit.

Six months to 30 June 2025 (unaudited)

Further analysis of revenue streams is shown in the business review.

The Board does not regularly review the aggregate assets and liabilities of its segments and accordingly, an analysis of these is not provided.

Analysis of other expenses:

Six months to 30 June 2024 (unaudited)

Further analysis of revenue streams is shown in the business review.

The Board does not regularly review the aggregate assets and liabilities of its segments and accordingly, an analysis of these is not provided.

Analysis of other expenses:

4. Other operating income

Other operating income in the period relates primarily to research and development credits of £0.3m and supplier commissions, promotions and bonuses of £0.1m (H1 2024: relates primarily to research and development credits of £0.5m).

5. Earnings per share

Earnings per share and adjusted earnings per share is calculated by dividing the (loss) / profit after tax for the period by the weighted average number of shares in issue for the period. These figures have been prepared as follows:

The adjustments above have been made to provide a clearer picture of the trading performance of the Group.

In calculating adjusted diluted earnings per share, the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue is adjusted to assume conversion of all potentially dilutive ordinary shares. The Group has one category of potentially dilutive ordinary share, being those share options granted to employees where the exercise price is less than the average price of the Company's ordinary shares during the period.

Potentially dilutive shares have not been included in the diluted EPS for the six months ended 30 June 2025 on the basis that they are anti-dilutive, however they may become dilutive in future periods.

Therefore, as a loss has arisen for the six months ended 30 June 2025, the basic and diluted earnings per share are the same.

6. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA)

The following table shows the calculation of EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA:

7. Dividends

The Directors have decided not to declare an interim dividend for 2025 (2024: £nil).

8. Exceptional items

9. Borrowings