CMS's Dan McMahon came with the deal and is now chief operating officer. An acquisition is not viable unless management comes too. The Exsol holding was sold into JSE-listed ECHold, a leader in digital security. Hills acknowledges that this is potentially an overtraded area but it is essential to be able to provide secure business continuity and storage service provision facilities. Another area in which MGX sees good growth is ASP, or application service provision - buzzwords for allowing one's customers merely to use computer software to access data over the Internet without the trouble and expense of individual purchase and installation.
Users simply pay for access.
What is refreshing about MGX is that it is already looking to the next five years in the Sunday Times Top Companies survey. At the time of writing, Hills was unable to comment specifically on CCH, but could generalise on the MGX strategy. Even though we have shown five years of consistent growth, our price-earnings ratio is now lower than when we listed and the same goes for a lot of good companies. CCH has some of the qualities which we seek and we are talking to them. We have strong cash flow from our operations and annuity income forms more than half our revenue.