Scottish IT services group Sword is lining up more acquisitions as it prepares to join the £100m-revenue club.
The fast-growing, Aberdeen-headquartered outfit comprises six autonomous businesses, including a £40m-revenue networking arm based on its 2022 acquisition of Cisco Gold partner Ping Network Solutions.
It also operates businesses focused on managed services, energy and utilities, data and AI, OT security and oil and gas subsurface data.
Around 80% of Sword’s 650 UK staff are based in Scotland, Craig Neilson, Business Unit Director – Networks, Cloud & Cyber Security at Sword, said.
“As part of our growth strategy, we’re looking to bolster capabilities south of the border,” he told IT Channel Oxygen.
“We’re targeting double-digit organic growth year on year for the overall business, but in addition we’re looking to add complementary acquisitions.
“In the UK, Sword has completed three or four acquisitions in the last three-and-a-half years, and we want to continue on that trajectory.
“We’ve hopefully got an acquisition lined up for Q1 and are looking to add more through the course of 2026 and beyond.”
Hitting £100m
With the former Ping business only integrated on 1 January 2025, Sword’s calendar 2024 accounts show revenue of just £50m.
The 2025 tally is set to hit £90m, with the contribution of wholly owned subsidiaries pushing the total to around £102m, Neilson revealed.
Organic growth for the year will stand at around 11%, he said.
Known for its prowess in the energy sector, Sword also counts utilities and financial services as key target verticals, alongside a more nascent public sector focus.
The former Ping business Neilson helms has over the last 12 months organically grown a 30-employee cybersecurity practice, he revealed.
“Historically, it was very much a Cisco partner – think of it a Scottish version of ITGL,” he said.
“Since then, we’ve expanded out some of our capabilities and selectively added a few additional complementary partners.
“We’re doing more physical data centre work than we ever thought we’d be doing with customers who maybe wholly embraced the cloud but are starting to backtrack.”
Although the UK business runs independently from €323m-revenue, 3,500-employee French parent Sword Group, the group’s global prowess gives it an edge in some scenarios, Neilson claimed.
“We’re finding ourselves in situations, particularly in the energy sector, where some of our customers are under pressure from a cost perspective,” he said.
“We can tap into our Indian operations to potentially bring in cost efficiencies, while also running a UK-driven service. We’re not going to completely outsource your service like a tier one might like a TCS or an Accenture.
“We can give our customers the best of both worlds and that gives us the ability to offer something different to our customers”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
