Academia’s 23% services growth leaves half of revenue years away

On 8 October Academia, a UK reseller and managed service provider with roots in selling Apple technology to higher education, said group revenue rose 10% to £152m in its 2026 financial year, which IT Channel Oxygen reported ran to 30 June. Managed services revenue grew 23%. Headcount went from 266 to 273, and the company says the three months to September 2026 were its best first quarter on record. It gave no figure for that quarter and no profit or margin figures for the year.

Mark McCormack, group managing director of Academia, put the services number at the center of the result. “The 23% growth in Managed Services is in line with our plans and demonstrates the progress we are making in broadening our proposition,” he said in the company’s announcement. He added: “We’ve also deliberately increased our investment in people.”

In September 2025 McCormack told IT Channel Oxygen that managed services made up around 30% of Academia’s £138m revenue in the year to June 2025, after growing 44%, and that the target was half the business: “We’d love to get to about 50%,” he said. Part of that 44% came from Smartdesc, a £9m-revenue MSP Academia bought in 2024, which McCormack said contributed five or six months to that year’s numbers. The 2026 release does not separate organic from acquired growth.

Read together, the figures show how slowly even 23% growth moves the revenue mix at a reseller of this size, and how little revenue figures alone can prove about the shift: Academia gave no margin figure, and its headcount grew far more slowly than its services line. For owners of smaller resellers and MSPs attempting the same shift, the arithmetic is more useful than the headline growth rate.

How far 23% moves the mix

Taking McCormack’s approximate 2025 figures, managed services brought in about £41m in the year to June 2025. Growth of 23% puts that line at roughly £51m in the latest year, or about a third of £152m. Everything else – hardware, software and other services – grew from about £97m to about £101m, or roughly 5%. These are VETTDD’s calculations from rounded figures, not numbers Academia has published.

If both rates held, services would not pass half of revenue for another four to five years, around the 2030–31 financial year. That assumes a 23% services growth rate that may itself be flattered by a full year of Smartdesc set against five or six months in the year before.

McCormack did not say in 2025 whether the target was a share of revenue or of gross profit, and the two give very different answers. Hardware resale carries thin margins and services usually carry fatter ones, so services can account for half of gross profit long before they account for half of revenue. Academia gave no such split with its results, so that measure of its progress cannot be checked from the announcement.

What the headcount figures show

Academia says it has strengthened its people team and runs an apprenticeship scheme, but gave no figure for what either costs. In the September 2025 interview, McCormack said Academia was bringing around 10 apprentices through the business after a two-year gap, as it prepared for growth.

Seven more employees is a rise of 2.6%, against 10% growth in revenue and 23% in managed services. Revenue per employee rose from about £520,000 to about £560,000, again by VETTDD’s calculation. For comparison, Informa’s 2026 MSP 501 Survey Insights Report, published in September 2026, sponsored by distributor Ingram Micro and drawing on data from more than 600 MSPs worldwide, found recurring revenue grew 11.9% and total revenue 9.6%, while the workforce at those firms grew 6.9%.

So Academia grew its services line at roughly twice the pace of that global sample while adding staff at well under half its rate. Possible explanations include a hiring wave still to come, more work absorbed by existing engineers, more automation or Smartdesc’s staff already counted in the earlier year’s headcount while its revenue counted in full only in the latest year. The release does not say which.

What reseller owners should measure

Academia’s figures are company claims from a private business, published without profit figures, so they show direction rather than proof. They still set a sharper test for any reseller or MSP owner who has promised a board or buyer a services-led business:

• Services share of gross profit, monthly. Revenue mix flatters hardware-heavy firms in a good device year and punishes them in a bad one. Gross profit mix shows whether the shift is working.
• Organic services growth, stated separately. Any acquired MSP should be stripped out for the first full year, or the growth rate will overstate what the sales team can repeat.
• Gross profit per services employee. If it rises while headcount stays flat, find out whether that is efficiency or overstretched engineers, before customer churn reveals it.
• The date the target is due. A 50% goal with no year attached cannot be managed. At Academia’s current rates, the revenue version is four to five years away.

Owners setting a services target should write down whether it is a share of revenue or of gross profit, the organic growth rate needed to hit it and the number of engineers that rate requires, then fund those hires a year before the contracts arrive.