NLG.L Share News (NLG)

Shares in Arria NLG climbed 4% early on Tuesday, after the developer of natural language generation software technologies reported a sharp increase in the first half of the year.In the six months to 31 March, the London-listed group reported revenue of £0.9m, a 174% increase year-on-year, while operating losses more than halved to £1.9m.The company, which agreed a partnership with tech giant IBM in the period, said it managed to reduce operating costs by 41% year-on-year to £2.3m and it now had five clients contributing to revenue compared with the two in the first half of 2014.Arria, which raised £0.41m via a private placing in February, said it had expanded its client reach into a number of new sectors, including agronomy, aviation, insurance and assurance."The broadening of our reach into new sectors to build on our historic focus of oil & gas and financial services can only serve the company well," said group chairman and chief executive Stuart Rogers."Continued traction and delivery of new client engagements and the transitioning of those clients through our engagement process into licensing revenues will be the driving focus during the second half of 2015 and beyond."Arria NLG shares were up 5.40% to 19.50p at 09:43 on Tuesday.