ISP Zen Internet Hope to Become £100m UK Business Within 3 Years

Rochdale-based broadband provider Zen Internet, which over the years has built itself a strong reputation in the UK ISP and telecoms industry, has set itself a new target of becoming a £100 million business within just 3 years and a £250 million business within 10 years.

The ISP’s most recent financial report to September 2016 (here) revealed an annual turnover of £57.2m (up from £54.2m in 2015), net assets of £10.4m (up from £9m) and an operating profit of £2.5 million (down from £3.5m). The weaker profit position was blamed on aggressive pricing by competitors and the increasing bandwidth demands of users.

Since then Zen has completed its transition to become a “full service connectivity and networking provider, with a portfolio that goes way beyond broadband and into voice, cloud, IP VPN and Ethernet services.” On top of that the provider intends to support their growth aspirations by creating a new board of directors, which is headed up by former Sage executive Paul Stobart as Chairman.

Richard Tang, Zen’s CEO, said:

“Zen has a huge opportunity over the next few years and if we are to maximise that opportunity and really scale Zen up to be a major contender in the UK market, we need a leadership structure that is even stronger and the ability to tap into even more experience and capability.

Our current senior management team have done a brilliant job. The separate board, chaired by Paul, will work closely with the SMT to unlock new and exciting opportunities for growth.”

Paul Stobart would seem to be a good fit for the new strategy, not least since he helped to grow Sage from a turnover of £120m to £1.3bn and may now seek to do the same with Zen. Mind you Zen is a very different business from accountancy and business management firm SAGE. Hopefully in the race for growth they don’t neglect their reputation for service quality.