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TWST: Shall we start with a quick introduction to Xpertise Group (London: XPG.L)?

Mr. Bradley: Xpertise is a UK AIM-listed company. Our core business has traditionally been training in the Midlands, Northwest and Northeast of England. We added to that a training solutions business unit, which we established at the beginning of this year, and that has successfully achieved the revenue targets that we set over the first 3-4 months. In the last six weeks we have taken a major step forward in our strategy: as I explained to you earlier in the year, part of the strategy was to acquire a London and Thames Valley based training business. In fact, we have been successfully able to buy what was one of our partners-cum-competitors, a company called John Bryce Training, formerly known as Aris Education, which unfortunately went into receivership at the end of July. We were consequently able to buy from the receiver and establish our presence in London.

TWST: And that opens the door potentially for more business?

Mr. Bradley: We think that the addition of a training business in the London and Thames Valley region is important in its own right because that’s a key part of the UK for IT training companies. It is where the majority of IT businesses are based and obviously where a lot of the IT users are based as well. So it’s of value in its own right. However, for us it is particularly important because we believe that there are a number of national customers who would like to be using us as a quality provider in the market, but who to date have excluded us from consideration because we weren’t able to service their needs in the London and Thames Valley area. Now by giving us a presence there, we have enabled ourselves to address the market that’s looking for a national supplier. That is a very important part of the strategy going forward.

TWST: Are your people one of your key assets?

Mr. Bradley: Absolutely. One of the big differentiators for us is the quality of what goes on in the classroom. We get a lot of feedback from our customers who tell us the reason why they have come to Xpertise is because the lecturer understands the technology in context and can talk off the subject of the course and answer their real world questions rather than simply sticking rigidly to the course notes and then handing out the certificates at the end of the course. They are actually able to explain technical issues in the context of the clients’ own business and systems, so that delegates can go and put that knowledge into practice.

TWST: You mentioned the expertise of the lecturers. What else would you highlight as important strengths within the company?

Mr. Bradley: I think much of the strength is in the motivation and skill of the staff and management team. I believe we have got one of the best management teams in the UK and our staff are well motivated. They believe in the business and are passionate about doing a good job for our clients and that comes out not just in the quality we put in the classroom, but in the quality of our sales processes and the responsiveness of our business. We try to be the easiest company to do business with and I think we succeed to a reasonable degree.

TWST: What’s the game plan going forward?

Mr. Bradley: It’s further progress on the original strategy laid our early in the year, which is growing the training solution side and it’s further acquisitions to give us scale. Our goal has always been to be one of the UK’s leading players within 3-5 years and I think we are well on track for achieving that. Indeed, I would say that, although the very tight market causes us the same challenges that it causes everybody else, it’s actually working in our favor in that we are more or less holding our own when a lot of our competitors are seeing significant declines and in some cases, as I mentioned earlier, going out of business. So the recession is helping us and we must be gaining significant market share as time goes by. Another way to look at that is the phrase, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going” We have demonstrated the quality of our business in delivery, in strategy and in management.