Trading in the first few months of the year was hurt by macroeconomic pressures, leading to deferred customer decisions, particularly among big companies, the firm said in an update to the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges ahead of its AGM.
The stock fell as much as 27.43 to 3.69, the lowest since April 2023, before paring some losses to trade down 23 at 3.91 by 8am in London 9am SAST. On the JSE, where Bytes has a secondary listing, the shares were trading 23.6 lower at R92.82 as of 10.38am.
Bytes , which provides software, cloud and AI services and which was unbundled from JSE-listed Altron Group five years ago in a restructuring, is moving from a generalist sales model to specialised, customer segment-focused teams a shift that has taken longer than expected, it said.
Also weighing on its performance in the first half are changes to Microsofts enterprise agreement programme, which the company had disclosed earlier, where certain transactional incentives have been reduced.
The impact of the changes are weighted more to the first half due to high levels of renewals in March and April, Bytes said.