Agency Health Check
As readers know, we do an agency health check on various agencies to help IT contractors. Contractors have been caught out before when their agencies went under.
One guy I know lost £48,000 when Chamberlin Scott went under. A quick check on their balance sheet before signing a contract with them would fix that.
So, let‘s look at Highams Systems, who are an IT Agency specialising in the areas of banking, finance and insurance.
They made a loss for the period, which isn‘t good – but it was only 29K and that was on turnover of £8.8m.
Healthy Balance Sheet
However, their Balance Sheet is fairly healthy.
They have net assets of £2.2m. This is down from £2.5m.
The Goodwill part of this is £1.3m, so they are still well in credit even when you take out the Goodwill.
They had a negative Cash Flow of 278K during the period, which is manageable.
So, as of the current time, Highams Systems seem to be in no trouble at all, with little debt (interest payments were only 43K).
They are even looking to make further acquisitions and their Balance Sheet looks pretty healthy.
No Danger of Going Bust
They don‘t look to be going bust anytime soon.
From the point of view of shareholders, they would be disappointed by the fact that there was a profits warning.
However, from a contractor‘s view they don‘t look to be one of the agencies at any current risk of topping over and leaving the contractors with gaping holes in their finances.
So, is your agency safe? Could it go under costing you thousands, and maybe tens of thousands of pounds?
If your agency has broken its contract with you by not paying you within the stipulated period you must take swift action.
See our Agency Health Check in our Contract Jobs sector.
