City web designers buy way out of Infinity trio

By ADAM GIFFORD

Auckland web design and hosting firm Netbyte Infinity has left Infinity Group.

Netbyte directors Penny and Scott Wilson bought back the 50 per cent stake they sold to Trilogy Computers in 1999.

Trilogy was bought last year by Infinity, an IT conglomerate put together by former Brierley Investments executives Paul Collins, Bruce Hancox and Patsy Reddy.

Mr Wilson said that association had not worked in Netbyte's favour.

"We sold the company to Trilogy, a privately owned, strong national computer services company we saw we had synergy with," he said.

"Within a year we found ourselves owned by an organisation we had never heard of, whose intention was to grow into the largest IT company in the country and then list it on the sharemarket. That was never in Netbyte's plans.

"We are a media company, not a technology company. The focus for us is in the marketing and communications aspect of websites, not the technology."

He said that although a flow of work initially came from the Trilogy relationship, under Infinity Netbyte found itself competing for web development work with the other parts of the group, Madison Systems and Comtex, "both of whom claimed to be web developers."

Because Netbyte was only 50 per cent owned by Infinity, "they couldn't tell us what to do, or take us apart and put us back together. So if it was an Infinity job, it would go elsewhere."

However, the company was asked to develop Infinity's own website.

Mr Wilson said Netbyte continued to grow at more than 20 per cent a year while other web companies were contracting.

Infinity Group executive director Jon Hartley said that in putting together the three companies which make up Infinity Solutions, overlapping skills became clear.

"Because of the differing paths the businesses were taking, it was easier for the Netbyte people to take us out," Mr Hartley said.

"We worked it through amicably."

The sale was for "about book value," he said, which was the price Trilogy paid adjusted for earnings over the period.

Mr Hartley said Netbyte's turnover was "a little over $1 million," and its departure would have little effect on Infinity Solutions, with turnover of about $85 million.

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