Northcoders in loss despite £7.1m record revenue

Northcoders Group plc, the provider of digital, software and coding training programmes, said its 2023 revenue rose to a record £7.1 million, increasing 27% from £5.6 million in FY22 “driven by geographic expansion and entry into new disciplines.”

Gross profit rose 13% to £4.4 million but loss for the year before tax was £1.2 million compared to a £300,00 profit in 2022.

Northcoders is based in Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Birmingham.

Northcoders reported record growth in numbers of individuals trained, increasing to 2,852 from 1,685 a year earlier “demonstrating Northcoders ability to rapidly scale its training services.”

The firm said its relationship with the UK government continues to strengthen “achieving a £4.5 million bid to fund students in H2-2023 and FY-2024, as announced in September 2023” and a further “£10 million bid win announced in January 2024.”

“B2C bootcamps now taught across the UK, including new regions such as Scotland — significant growth since IPO — and experiencing strong demand for new technology disciplines such as Cloud Engineering (DevOps) …” said the firm.

“B2B Business Solutions began first central Government contract in Q4 2023 and continues to develop strong pipeline of corporate business opportunities …

“Successful acquisition of Tech Returners in February 2023 to help further improve access to technology, strongly focussing on facilitating women’s return to the workplace following career breaks

“NCore learning platform ready for roll out in FY24 to companywide efficiencies and further margin growth.”

On current trading and outlook, Northcoders said: “Both B2C and B2B divisions starting FY24 strongly, with record B2C applications and a growing pipeline for B2B contracts …

£10 million DfE contract announced in January 2024, giving further revenue visibility for FY-2024 and H1-2025 and underpinning an 18.6% increase in revenue per student …

“Revenue access and contracted visibility already reaching £8.3 million for FY24 …

“Planned launch of flexible, part time courses announced on 4 April 2024, to increase access to training for individuals from a wider array of backgrounds …

“As anticipated, positive Ofsted monitoring visit in February 2024, ensuring future funding safeguarded and credibility of Northcoders offering maintained …

“Northcoders trading in line with market expectations for FY24.”

Northcoders CEO Chris Hill said: “I am pleased to report another year of record revenue growth with further increasing demand for our high-quality training products.

“Despite the subdued technology hiring market making FY23 more challenging in certain areas of the business, we have continued to fulfil our ambitious growth strategy.

“We have continued to scale our B2C division using our growth levers of geographic expansion, increasing technology disciplines that we teach, and introducing new training formats.

“We have also further developed our nascent B2B division, using the Group’s strong reputation in technology training to build our pipeline of new business prospects.

“Our position is strong as the hiring market returns and look forward to providing more updates in due course.

“There’s no doubt that digital transformation continues to be at the forefront of business priorities, driving  individual and corporate training demand for our services.

“This, combined with the long term bi-party Government funding commitments to upskilling private and public sectors, leaves Northcoders well positioned to continue to scale the business and deliver value to our shareholders.”