As forewarned last month (CI No 985) Sherwood Computer Services Plc, Romford, Essex turned in a pre-tax loss of UKP1.5m for the half-year to June 30. The company blamed trading problems at its two recent acquisitions Corporate Technology Group and Mitronix for the loss and said its core businesses turned in improved profits. Corporate, which was acquired in March last year, specialises in software packages for local government and was due to supply a number of authorities with its new housing benefit package HB88. Problems with implementation of the new package a fall-off in demand for existing products resulted in a UKP1.7m for the division. The company believes problems arose because of the rushed manner in which a number of the packages were installed and two months on claims it has a much happier user base. Corporate has since been renamed Sherwood Computer Services and is planning a joint project with ICL for the development of a housing benefits and community charge product range using high level applications generators for local government. The agreement, which is yet to be ratified by the two boards, will result in Sherwood dropping its IBM activities in local government and concentrating exclusively on ICL and Honeywell hardware. A company spokesman admitted that the division was unlikely to show a profit for the second half but was hoping to move into profitability in 1989. The combined trading losses of insurance systems specialist Mitronix and Sherwood Network Services amounted to UKP530,000 in the half. Sherwood admitted that Mitronix’s margins could not support its overhead base and as a result the division has seen an unspecified number of job losses.
