Fidessa's numbers a bit light - except the divi

Trading systems developer Fidessa kept up its tradition of paying a special dividend after it saw 10% growth in revenue and adjusted profit before tax in 2010."The strength of our business has been reflected in a number of key metrics, including an increase of around 25% in the value of transactions going through our network, and our cash balance which has reached £63.0m (2009: £45.5m) after paying a special dividend of 40 pence per share (£14.2m) during 2010," said chief executive Chris Aspinwall.This time round the company has improved on last year's 40p special dividend and is paying 45p on top of the standard full year dividend of 33p, which is itself a 10% improvement on 2009's full year dividend of 30p.Revenue rose to £262.3m from £238.5m the year before while adjusted profit before tax improved to £40.0m from £36.2m.Panmure Gordon, which said the company has a history of beating market expectations, was expecting a bit more on the pre-tax profit front and had pencilled in a figure of £42m. Revenue was also at the lower end of the market range of £262m to £267m.The percentage of recurring revenue remained unchanged from the year before at 81% of the total. The group achieved £133m of recurring revenue from the sell-side trading division, up from £122m in 2009, £14m (unchanged) from buy-side trading, £43m (2009: £37m) from connectivity and £23m (2009: £21m) from market data.Regionally, Asia showed the strongest growth, up 22%, and now represents 15% of total revenue. Europe grew by 10%, and remains the group's biggest market, accounting for 51% of total revenue. North American revenues grew by 5% and represent 34$ of total revenue. "Looking ahead, we believe our markets will remain difficult for some time to come, although we believe there will still be growth opportunities. In particular we are already seeing an increase in the level of consultancy we are providing, which is often a lead indicator, and we have a sound sales pipeline coming into 2011," said Aspinwall. "As a result, we believe that the strength of our business will enable us to deliver further good growth in 2011, with this growth likely to be at similar levels to that which we have seen during 2010," he added.