Member Info for jange

Robert Walters, Chief Executive, said: "We have delivered a stable performance against a backdrop of deteriorating conditions in the global financial markets. This has been achieved by a long term strategy of investing in territories that offer the best growth prospects and we are also ensuring that we maintain a leading position in our more established markets. We are continuing with this strategy with new offices opened in the UK, Australia and Brazil. "We have a strong balance sheet and an experienced management team. We will continue to maintain our presence in the territories where market conditions are challenging, whilst also investing in the business for the long term to take advantage of growth opportunities in new and emerging markets." As at June 30th, the company had net cash of £4.5m (June 30th 2011: £10.7m).

A banking sector slow-down in the Asia Pacific put a dent in net fee income in the second quarter at recruitment firm Robert Walters. Group profit in the second quarter fell 3 per cent, or 2 per cent on a constant currency basis, from £49.2m a year ago to £47.6m this time round, which the group hailed as a "stable performance" against a deteriorating market. Regionally, in the UK net fee income was flat at £12.1m, in Europe it fell five per cent from £10.5m to £10.0m, in the Americas and South Africa it rose four per cent from £1.5m to £1.6m, and in the Asia Pacific region it declined five per cent from £25.1m to £23.9m. The company was keen to emphasise that Resource Solutions, its recruitment outsourcing business, performed strongly during the three month period, but admitted Europe was affected by ongoing Eurozone financial and political uncertainty.

Trading Emissions slipped on Thursday after it released details of negotiation in China to reduce its losses and liabilities arising from commitments to purchase Certified Emission Reduction certificates at fixed prices, which remained above prevailing market prices. It said eight out of 44 ERPAs had been renegotiated with project owners, but 16 project owners had, to date, declined to commence renegotiations. Shares dropped 2% on the news.

Stadium Group said sales in the first half were below last year due to the underlying economic environment and the impact of the company's decision to withdraw from a number of low margin legacy contracts. However, it said this had been partially offset by a number of important new business wins and continuing cost reduction activity. It added that the firm was pursuing a number of potential acquisitions.

Biotechnology firm Epistem Hldings said it had received the go-ahead to sells its new tuberculosis product in EEA member state markets. The firm said its Genedrive units provided a major advance in next generation molecular diagnostic testing. Epistem is now preparing regulatory submissions for India, which has the largest number of TB sufferers in the world.

Kenneth Alexander, Chief Executive Officer of GVC, said: "Against a backdrop of challenging economic conditions we are pleased to report that the group has generated a strong performance in the first half of the year. "Our B2B division, which has been operational now for just over seven months, continues to perform well. The sixty staff engaged within this new division have worked extremely hard to establish this revenue stream for the group and this is reflected in the figures reported today. "Our B2C brands have performed satisfactorily given the underlying economic climate and overall we remain cautiously optimistic for the year.

GVC, which already runs its own online betting franchises, says its new business-to-business (B2B) offering has really hit the jackpot Gross revenues across the group in the six months to the end of June increased 147% over the prior year to €270k per day. The B2B division saw significant growth from November 2011 after it entered into a service agreement with East Pioneer Corporation to provide back office services. Turnover reached an average of €164k per day against just €8k last year. Gross revenues in the business-to-consumer (B2C) side rose 4% to €106k per day. Sports wagers rose 146% to an average of €119k per day although the margin was softer at 8.1% versus 10.9% last year. Revenues in Betboo, GVC's Latin American brand, rose by 32% to €28k per day. CasinoClub revenues saw a modest decline of 4% to €78k per day reflecting ongoing consumer uncertainty in Germany.

Nice buy if it is one.......

"The start to the [new financial] year sees Group Escrow renewals at £17.9m, up from £17.3m in the year to 31st May 2012 and a verification order book of £1.7m of which £0.5m relates to Escrow Europe and Escrow US," the company said. "The Assurance division order books have improved to £19.7m (2011: £17.8m) and have £5.8m of monitoring renewals forecast for the current financial year (2011: £5.3m)," the statement added.

Looking ahead, the company will be seeking to continue the trend of reducing reliance on its home market. Last year, 69% of revenue came from the UK, down from 74% the year before. One area that NCC won't be touching is Russia and China. "We don't want to go to Russia or China, or places like that. They are too perilous. when you are dealing with them you leave yourself too open," Cotton cautioned. "Without wishing to cast aspersions on an entire nation, there is a reason why all their products look the same as ones in the West. They are like magpies, or at least the hacktivist elements are," according to Cotton. Seeing as a part of NCC's business is guarding against industrial espionage, he probably knows what he is talking about. "When the US sets up a task force to wage war in the fifth dimension [cyberspace], well, that tells you how serious things are. "Even MI5, not an organisation known for public pronouncements, has said that UK companies really need to take cyber-protection seriously," Cotton noted. NCC ended its fiscal year with net debt of £22.7m, up from £20.5m the year before, after accounting for net cash outflows of £7.5m for acquisition and contingent acquisition payments during the year.

Adjusted group pre-tax profit increased 27% to £22.6m (2011: £17.8m), while the reported pre-tax profit figure was £10.6m (2011: £12.8m), after the group took a mostly non-cash charge of £7.11m relating to the aforementioned ill-starred information technology system upgrade. "The new system would have delivered cost reductions, if it had worked. We could have used it to integrate new companies into a standard system, but it slowed down the processes as soon as it went live," Cotton told Sharecast. "Some of the bits we really wanted to use just did not work, so we took the brave decision to abandon it and move on," he added. Quizzed over whether the person who made the decision to buy-in the new system had taken any flack, Cotton maintained that the research on the decision could not have been more thoroughly researched. "We specced it back in 2009; we did a lot of work on it, we really did. I can't fault the selection process," Cotton maintained. The company, which flagged the problems with the new system back in May, has now reverted to its old system and business continues as before

Revenue in the year to May 31st rose 24% to £87.7m from £71.0m the year before. Some of that growth was the result of acquisitions, but organic growth was still an impressive 17%. "It's the eighth year in a row of double-digit growth," CEO Rob Cotton reminded Sharecast. The Escrow division saw revenue grow 12% to £27.9m from £24.9m the year before, with organic revenue growth of 6%. The Assurance business grew revenue 30% (organic growth: 23%) to £59.8m from £46.1m the previous year. "The organic growth is really important but at the same time margins have grown substantially; the margin improvement in the Assurance [cyber-security] business is outstanding in the current environment," Cotton observed. The group's operating margin improved to 27% from 26% the year before with the Assurance division's margin improving to 17% from 14%, largely as a result of the group getting more premium rate work such as operational response, managed services and forensics.

Both divisions of technology services firm NCC had a solid year despite the disappointment of the company's bought-in new information technology not coming up to snuff. The company has two main divisions: Escrow and Assurance. The Escrow unit holds mission critical software in escrow on behalf of NCC's clients to ensure that even if the client's software supplier goes out of business, support will be maintained, while the Assurance division, in the words of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Rob Cotton, fights the good fight to stave off "cybergeddon", as 'hacktivists', corporate spies and unscrupulous foreign governments increasingly try to get their hands on intellectual property of corporate clients, while cyber-criminals try to hold companies to ransom with "denial of service" attacks on their web sites. Broadly speaking, Escrow is the high margin steady-Eddie business while Assurance is the faster-growing but lower-margin unit.

Panmure Gordon acted as nominated adviser (Nomad) and broker to the group.

WANdisco, which is an acronym of Wide Area Network Distributed Computing, currently has more than 200 customers globally, a number of which are in the US Fortune 100. Customers include heavy-hitters such as AT&T, Aviva, Barclays, Hewlett-Packard, Honda, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Motorola, NCR, Nokia, NTT and Wal-Mart. The group uses an annual subscription licence model to sell its products, providing a predictable revenue stream and a foundation for further expansion. Revenue has increased by 30.0% from $3.0m in 2010 to $3.9m in 2011 and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) and also before share based payments and exceptional costs has increased from a loss of $0.8m in 2010 to a profit of $0.2m in 2011

WANdisco, a California-based collaboration software developer with operations in Sheffield, has enjoyed a solid first week of its life on AIM. The stock made its debut on June 1st after raising around £15m from a placing of shares at 180p per share. Based on the placing price, the market capitalisation of the stock at the time of admission to AIM was £37m, since when the value of the company has risen above £40m. The group intends to use the net proceeds of the placing to drive growth by expanding the group's sales force; through the opening of an office in China and targeting the Far East market opportunity; through further product development; reducing the current level of provisions and other payables; general working capital purposes and potentially via complementary technology acquisitions.

The company is being advised by Liberum Capital.

When looking at acquisitions in the natural resources sector, the company intends to focus on Europe and emerging markets, while in the consumer goods sector, the same geographical focus will apply, save that African companies have been ruled out. The company does not anticipate the need to use any overdraft or short term borrowing facilities to satisfy short term working capital needs, including meeting any expenses or fees payable by the company, in advance of completion of any acquisition. However, the company does anticipate that debt will be used to fund a proportion of the consideration for the acquisition. The company does not intend to pay dividends before any acquisition is made. Once an Acquisition has been made, the directors will review this policy based upon the performance of the company following such acquisition.

Cash shell Sacoven has joined the AIM market, after raising funds for investment purposes through a share subscription. The company raised £3m after issuing shares at £1 a throw. The money will be used to invest in businesses or assets in the natural resources or consumer goods sectors. These sectors have been selected as they are the ones in which the company's investment adviser, Vasari Global, and investment team have relevant expertise, not to mention "an extensive network of relationships". Vasari Global is an international private wealth, multi-asset investment advisory firm with experience of owning and growing companies across a variety of sectors in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. As Sacoven's investment adviser it will provide strategic advice regarding a variety of asset classes and industry sectors with a speciality in branded goods, manufacturing and natural resources.

Heading the other way were the industrial engineers with Melrose among the stocks in the red despite saying that it has sold its injection moulding business, McKechnie Engineered Plastics, for over three times what it paid for it. The engineering company sold McKechnie to global plastics group Rosti A/S for £30.7m in cash. The acquisition of McKechnie, along with the Dynacast businesses, in May 2005 for a net equity investment of £243.6m had resulted in total cash generation, including all disposal proceeds and the repayment of debt, of nearly £800m, Melrose said.