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TWST: Can we start with a short introduction to Nettec(London: NTC.L) and where the company is positioned today?

Mr. Nikolopulos: Nettec was founded in 1995 during the early days of the Internet in the UK. The founder of the company, Mr. Jeremy White, was the Chairman until Q2 of 2001 and, although he is no longer with the business, he remains the majority shareholder with share holdings of circa 25 per cent. Nettec began as a pioneer in the Internet space. If you cast you mind back several years, the biggest challenge in the UK was getting people to access and subsequently use the Internet, thus Nettec established itself around ISP Internet provision. Nettec soon expanded and became a strong player by building a core set of technology skills around the Internet assisting various companies to get ‘online’. With the passing of time, Nettec soon developed its own marketing & communication skills, hosting management and business consulting offerings. Nettec became what the market wanted at that time - a full service agency providing end-to-end systems integration comprising Internet consultancy, Internet technology, online marketing, branding & communications, plus the hosting and management of many companies’ online presence. Nettec’s vision was to become a leading player in the provision of Internet services. The plan was to expand in unison with the UK and European markets to become a leading pan-European provider of those solutions but within a tightly-knit integrated model. To this end, Nettec executed a very successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange in March 2000. A significant amount of cash was raised to address the expansion plans. It was a tremendous success story; Nettec went from inception in 1995, to a turnover of 4.5 million pounds in 1999, to flotation in 2000 when the company was valued at over 250 million pounds. The growth was exponential. In addition to much-needed funding to feed organic growth, Nettec used some of the money raised on the London Stock Exchange for acquisitions in the UK and overseas, specifically in France. However, even though the company had grown significantly and held its ground in 2001 with a turnover of just under 17 million pounds, as we all know, market demand has since reduced significantly. The dot-com bubble came and went and even though we had relatively few dot-com clients compared to mainstream clients, we found that the urgency for some of our blue chips clients - who have always been our fundamental client base - to ambitiously invest in the online technology, had evaporated. Their e-business projects have returned to being much more mainstream which I believe is a direct reflection of market trends. Nettec is now positioned as a company that has developed from very modest foundations that experienced rapid expansion both organically and through acquisition across Europe, to one that is now 65 people based in Kingston focusing very much upon the UK marketplace, delivering highly focused solutions around content-management systems and corporate portals. This focus has always been at the very heart of what Nettec was doing but the message was over-shadowed by the desire to be a full-service provider; in other words, Nettec was trying to be all things to all people. In the early days of the Internet explosion across Europe, the ability to guide clients by the hand in developing their entire Internet strategy - such as building the technology, developing their communication messages and subsequently managing their sites online - was essential. Many of our competitors at that time simply did not have the necessary skill-sets or experience. But over the years, as the first project became the second then the third, blue-chip companies became a lot more confident and proficient with online technology. We soon realized that our clients no longer wanted the full-service offering, rather, they were asking us for very specific expert skills that they were lacking. Nettec therefore made a decision at the beginning of 2002 to turn the company around. We reverted to our core competencies - which has always been the technology part of the organization - and we now focus upon what we do best, which is content-management and corporate portals. We found that by having a very focused and clear message within the marketplace, our clients have been asking for more and more of what we do well.