Infotech provider tTech Limited is wanting to grow its business by encouraging more small, medium, and large companies in Jamaica and overseas to concentrate on running their operations, while turning over the advancement and management of their IT infrastructure, including voice, data and computer systems, to them.

From this kind of work in which tTech specialises, the company earned revenues of $284 million and delivered net revenue of $27.5 million in 2018.

This compares to income of $178 million and net revenue of $24.9 million in 2015, the year before its listing on the junior market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange. Its 2019 results are pending.

CEO Christopher Reckord is intending to enhance on its own earnings as more companies pertain to value the financial benefits of turning over the management, tracking and support of their IT needs to a company. He concedes that in tTech’s location of expertise this is not a simple task.

“Numerous organisations in Jamaica believe that it is best to do everything ourselves. I don’t find the same thing in The United States and Canada, where business thinking is that if this is not my service abilities and sweet area, hand it over to somebody else,” Reckord told the Financial Gleaner in an interview at his offices on Duke Street, Kingston.

He notes that younger entrepreneurs more easily accept the concept.

The company’s core customers is a mix of about 60 small and large companies.

Our most significant growth area

“IT security– that is our most significant growth location,” said the tTech CEO. “Cybercrime, ransomware– it is rampant, here and nobody is talking about it. It is massive,” he said.

The search for greater revenues and earnings is taking the business overseas, which Reckord views as only rational since the competitors in the space in which his company operates is both local and foreign.

tTech has actually joined the growing line of companies searching chances in Guyana, the English-speaking nation on the South American mainland that recently discovered big reserves of the oil and which is projected to lead the world in economic growth this year. Notwithstanding its location, Guyana is lined up with the Caribbean and is a member and the host of the head office for the Caricom trading bloc.

Reckord recently returned from talks with some 10 potential customers in the Caricom member nation, where tTech provides services to GK Guyana, a subsidiary of Jamaica’s food and financial services conglomerate GraceKennedy Limited.

The business has a 10-year preparation horizon which consists of monetary targets that were not disclosed and the intent to open a co-working area in Montego Bay, where the business is said to have a growing customers. Business is also said to be adequately capitalised.

“There suffices capital. There is no financial obligation on the books, so we can handle some debt today, which might happen as we think about M&A (merger and acquisition) activities,” the tTech CEO stated, but decreased to comment further on the company’s M&A strategies.

Reckord wants to much better the business’s financials, however states he is not focused on chasing after numbers this year but, rather, on investing in personnel and the business’s capabilities.

With 106 million listed shares which traded as much as Monday at $4.60 per share, the company has a market capitalisation of $488 million. It’s nearly twice the business’s market price at listing in January 2016, however is a retreat to around half the levels of capitalisation achieved in 2017 in a bullish market.

The handled IT company began operations in 2006 when former CEO and now business chairman Edward Alexander left GraceKennedy as the conglomerate’s head of GK USA and group primary information officer to begin his own organisation. Alexander– who is the child of former GraceKennedy CEO and Chairman, the late Carlton Alexander– worked with the food and monetary services group for 50 years, having actually started as a stock clerk in 1933.

GraceKennedy was an early client and its different companies in Jamaica and overseas are amongst tTech’s core long-lasting clients. These consist of GK U.S.A., Canada and UK. The first client was Gateway Shipping, which took control of the accounts of GraceKennedy Shipping when it exited the service in 2003. The GK Pension is likewise among the leading 10 investors in the tech company.

tTech has grown staff from 4, when it started, to 45 today. Reckord’s association with the company began in 2013 as a specialist. In 2016, he joined the staff and has actually been CEO since 2018, when he changed Alexander.

Reckord states he has no plans to offer the range of IT services that are in demand, but is concentrated on what he calls “break-fix” services– merely reacting to the requirement to fix faults on a system– and proactive maintenance.

He said that the business has actually needed to refuse some jobs that fall beyond tTech’s focused services, while pointing to outdated devices, absence of paperwork and an absence of licences as some of the common imperfections of firms that require handled IT services.