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Maintel's 2025 results show revenue and profit down, but strategic progress in contract wins and pipeline growth offers hope for recovery.
This article covers information on Maintel Holdings PLC.
LON:MAIMaintel’s 2025 annual results are a mixed bag. The headline numbers are clearly weaker – revenue fell, margins slipped, and the group moved to a statutory loss. But this is not a simple “business in freefall” update. There are also some real signs that the turnaround plan is moving forward, especially in new contract wins, sales pipeline growth and refinancing.
For retail investors, the big question is straightforward: is this a temporary dip while Maintel reshapes the business, or a sign that the underlying model is still under pressure? Based on this RNS, it looks like both are true at once. The business is making progress operationally, but it still has work to do on growth, profitability and balance sheet strength.
| Metric | 2025 | 2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | £92.2 million | £97.9 million | (5.8%) |
| Gross profit | £28.0 million | £30.6 million | (8.5%) |
| Adjusted EBITDA | £7.2 million | £10.5 million | (31.4%) |
| Adjusted profit before tax | £4.0 million | £7.3 million | (45.2%) |
| Loss before tax | £2.3 million | Profit of £0.4 million | (675.0%) |
| Basic EPS | (11.8p) | 3.6p | (427.8%) |
| Adjusted EPS | 7.5p | 28.2p | (73.4%) |
| Net debt | £18.3 million | £16.7 million | 9.6% |
The sharpest deterioration is in adjusted EBITDA – that’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, adjusted for one-off items. In plain English, it is a rough measure of underlying operating cash profit. A 31.4% drop is significant, and it tells you the revenue decline hit harder than cost savings could offset.
The main drag was recurring revenue, which dropped 6.6% to £68.4 million. That matters because recurring revenue is usually the good stuff – contracted, visible, and generally more dependable than project work. It still made up 74% of group revenue, which is solid, but the decline shows Maintel lost some meaningful contracts and did not replace that income fast enough.
The biggest weak spot was on-premise managed services, down 17.9% to £18.3 million. That business includes older legacy telephony and contact centre systems, and management is pretty open that this area is in structural decline as customers move to cloud solutions. That is not a surprise, but it does create a constant need to replace old revenue with newer, better revenue.
Project revenue also slipped 3.2% to £23.8 million. Maintel says that reflected slower public sector growth and tougher competition in the private sector, especially in the second half. Interestingly, it also says that excluding one large 2024 project, underlying project growth would have been 24.6%, which suggests the headline comparison is a bit harsher than it first looks.
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This is where the more encouraging part of the story sits. Maintel signed approximately £50.0 million of total contract value in new business during 2025, with 70% of new sales bookings in its three strategic pillars – Unified Communications and Collaboration, Customer Experience, and Security and Connectivity.
That included some chunky wins: a 10-year SD-WAN and network security managed service with a leading UK retailer, an AI customer experience automation deployment, and a public cloud communications deal across around 320 stores and distribution centres. Those are the sort of contracts investors want to see – relevant technology, decent scale, and multi-year duration.
Security and connectivity services were the standout revenue line, up 3.2% to £20.6 million. In a year when the group as a whole went backwards, that is important. It shows Maintel is not just talking about strategic focus – there is actual growth in one of the areas management wants to build around.
The company also says its marketing-generated opportunity value increased more than three-fold, and that the sales pipeline reached its highest level for many years. Pipeline is not revenue, of course, but it does matter. For a business in transition, strong pipeline growth is the raw material for a recovery.
Gross margin fell to 30.4% from 31.3%. That is not a collapse, but it does show pressure from inflation and an unfavourable product mix. Public cloud revenue grew faster than higher-margin private cloud revenue, and high-margin SD-WAN infrastructure project revenue was lower.
On top of that, employer costs rose, and Maintel spent more on IT systems and marketing. I do not mind those investments in principle – if the company is rebuilding sales capability and internal systems, some spending is unavoidable – but investors should be clear that this is still depressing short-term profits.
There were also £2.2 million of exceptional costs, unchanged from 2024. These included transformation costs, restructuring, banking facility fees and a provision linked to an employment tribunal claim. When a company keeps booking sizeable exceptional costs year after year, investors are right to ask how “exceptional” they really are.
This is probably the most important section of the whole update. Net debt rose to £18.3 million, while year-end cash fell sharply to £624,000 from £4.1 million. The net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio increased to 2.6x from 1.6x. That is not catastrophic, but it is clearly more stretched than before.
The company is upfront that liquidity risk is higher than last year. In June 2026, it raised £5.5 million gross through new shares and convertible loan notes, and it renegotiated its banking arrangements with HSBC. The refinancing replaced old covenants with new ones focused on minimum cash EBITDA, liquidity, capital expenditure and creditor ageing, with covenant testing waived until September 2026.
That does two things. First, it gives Maintel breathing room. Second, it tells you the balance sheet needed support. I would view the refinancing as necessary and positive, but also as proof that investors cannot ignore the debt story here.
Management says trading in early 2026 has started positively in terms of sales bookings, and the order book has been bolstered heading towards the end of the first half. That is encouraging, but now comes the hard part – turning signed work into delivered revenue, cash and profit.
The company itself says 2026 is the “year of execution”. I think that is exactly right. Maintel has done a lot of the setup work: rebrand, sales structure, vendor partnerships, AI propositions, automation and cost savings. Investors now need proof that all of that turns into sustainable top-line growth.
This RNS is not a clean bullish update, because the financial deterioration is real. Revenue is down, adjusted EBITDA is down hard, debt is up, and the statutory result is a loss. Those are not details you brush aside.
But it is also not a disaster update. Maintel still has a high proportion of recurring revenue, cash conversion remained strong at 98%, strategic contract wins were meaningful, and the refinancing appears to have bought time for the turnaround to continue. The company looks like a business in the messy middle of a reset rather than one that has lost the plot entirely.
For investors, the key watchpoints now are pretty clear:
If Maintel delivers on those points, 2025 may end up looking like a painful but necessary transition year. If not, the pressure on the balance sheet and equity story will stay front and centre.
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