Software Leadership Dinner, March 2017

On the evening of March 27th, Spectrum hosted a Software Leadership Dinner in association with Silverpeak, the technology investment bank, and Wiggin, the technology law firm.

We were delighted to welcome Kevin Loosemore, the Executive Chairman of MicroFocus plc, as our keynote speaker.

As Executive Chairman, Kevin has led tremendous growth at MicroFocus, which has seen it move from a FTSE250 to FTSE100 company, and, with the conclusion of the HPE acquisition in September, MicroFocus will be the UK’s largest technology organisation and a FTSE40 business.

In a lively Q&A session over dinner with our guests – software industry CEOs primarily – Kevin articulated some of his core philosophies: including the company’s approach to M&A, his belief that technologies last a lot longer than most people think, and a total focus on shareholder return.

MicroFocus (and its shareholders) have clearly benefitted from the company’s approach of acquiring mature software suppliers who have lost value while chasing revenue growth, and then delivering business operational efficiency post-acquisition, generating EBITDA margins of 48% that are ahead of mature software providers, and a high EBITDA to Capex conversion at 98%.

A few days later, MicroFocus presented to the financial markets about its biggest acquisition to date – the pending HPE Software transaction. The presentation is well worth a read, and available here: Micro Focus presentation.

To register your interest in attending future events, please contact Sarah Rush at Spectrum.