LONDON (Alliance News) - Gresham Computing PLC Tuesday said the first quarter of 2015 started well, with the first two months of the year "significantly ahead" of the previous year, as it reported a decline in pretax profit for 2014.
The company posted a pretax profit of GBP456,000, down from GBP1.7 million a year before, as revenue declined to GBP12.8 million from GBP14.0 million. Gresham blamed the fall in revenue on the strength of sterling against the Australian dollar, a fall in demand for real-time financial services, and a number of clients delaying projects from the last quarter of 2014 into 2015.
However, recurring revenue rose 14%, partly due to an increase in revenue from its Clareti Transaction Control product. The company more than doubled its number of CTC customers during the year, and said it had entered 2015 with a strong pipeline for the product.
"We are confident of making further progress with CTC in 2015 and continue to win direct and indirect CTC customers and grow CTC recurring revenues in line with our strategy. The board firmly believes that executing our strategic plans to achieve long term profitable growth and shareholder value remain on track," said outgoing Chief Executive Officer Chris Errington in a statement.
Errington will be succeeded by Ian Manocha from the start of June. Manocha will join the company from SAS institute Inc, a business analytics and services company.
Additionally, the company will put forward a resolution at its upcoming annual general meeting to make purchases of up to 10% of its issued share capital.
Shares in Gresham are trading up 2.0% at 86.46 pence Tuesday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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Gresham (GHT)