Horizon Computer boss Mr Samir Naji, the Corkman of Egyptian descent who speaks with a Palo Alto accent, made a pretty favourable impression at last week's NCB technology conference in London. At the same time, he confirmed that Horizon had compensated for the postponed stock market flotation with a £7.4 million private placing that values Horizon at £45 million.

Horizon has been a fairly acquisitive group and the £7.4 million raised on its behalf by NCB will undoubtedly be used to continue this growth - particularly in Horizon's knowledge services (that's training to you and me) and systems integration divisions. These two divisions have high margins and Horizon has been successful in building up a blue-chip clients base in both.

Knowledge services, in particular, is seen as a huge growth sector for Horizon and NCB has forecast that turnover in this sector alone will double to £13.5 million next year and £19.6 million the following year.

But there is a feeling in the industry that the low margin (2-3 per cent) distribution business, which will have sales of around £66 million this year, may not fit in to Horizon's long-term strategy.

At the NCB briefing, Mr Naji made it clear that future acquisitions would be in knowledge services and systems integration and that the distribution business would play an increasingly less dominant role in the group's business.

Many believe that in the long term, Horizon may offload the distribution business to a competitor like Sharptext and use the proceeds to gear up for substantial acquisitions in its higher margin businesses.

Horizon raised its £7.4 million on the basis of expected after-tax profits this year of £1.2 million and £3.2 million for 1999. Using the 1999 figure, this is equivalent to over 14 times after-tax profits, and that multiple represents an expectation by the institutions which took up shares in the placing of high growth in the years ahead. That growth is more likely to come from the higher-margin businesses than a PC wholesaling business.

The distribution business is thought to have about 30 per cent of the Irish market for hardware and would be an attractive buy for a company already active in the sector.

As for a listing for Horizon, the betting is that, despite the private placing, the company will be on the market by the end of 1999.