LONDON (Alliance News) - Arria NLG PLC Thursday said its pretax loss narrowed in the half year to end-March, as it continued to develop its natural language generation software following its initial public offering on AIM in December.
Arria NLG is a software development company focused on artificial intelligence.
The company posted a pretax loss of GBP5.3 million for the six month period, narrowed from GBP7.3 million in the previous year, as revenue rose to GBP330,000 from GBP210,000, boosted by its contract with Royal Dutch Shell PLC, and it cut administrative expenses. In the previous year the company's results were hit by acquisition costs.
Arria signed a three-year contract with Shell worth between USD5 million and USD10 million for non-exclusive use of its natural language generation engine.
It deployed the latest version of its Arria natural language generation engine in January, and new software to support the engine in April to allow easier access to data sets and higher quality analysis of data.
The company has established what it calls a 'Language Factory', its group for developing software and services for business-to-business and business-to-consumer products. Arria NLG said the team has been "exploring a wide range of ideas for development."
Arria NLG said it was actively seeking new clients and applications for its products in a number of areas including the oil and gas industry, defence and financial services.
It has also completed the first stage of development of its NLG Studio software, which is designed to help developers build their own natural language generation systems. It will continue to develop the product, and said there was recognised revenue potential from licensing it in the long term.
Arria NLG acquired two companies during the year, Data2Text Ltd for GBP3.1 million in cash and a 22.59% share interest, and Global IP Inc for 5.1 million shares in October 2013.
Shares in Arria NLG were trading down 3.8% at 61.60 pence Thursday afternoon.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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