Last checked at 23 Apr 2013 07:00
For Immediate Release 23 April 2013
Eckoh plc
("Eckoh" or "the Company")
Trading Update
Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK), the UK's leading provider of speech recognition and associated payment solutions, provides a trading update for the 12 months ended 31 March 2013 ahead of its full year results to be announced on 11 June 2013.
The Company has seen a strong financial performance over the second half of the financial year and continues to experience significant demand for its products. The Company confirms that results for the year ended 31 March 2013 will be in line with market expectations.
The 2012/13 financial year has seen a high volume of new clients being secured with the client base growing from 39 clients to 50 during the period. A full year of revenue from these clients along with a very strong sales pipeline is anticipated to see the growth seen in recent years to continue into the periods ahead.
Eckoh maintains a strong balance sheet position with a cash balance of £8.5 million as at 31 March 2013 (£6.4m at 31 March 2012). This strong foundation underpins both our progressive dividend policy and the Company's on-going investment in Research and Development projects and new Sales and Marketing initiatives.
Against this background, the Board remain confident that the Company's future trading prospects remain strong and set to continue in the medium term. Therefore, and as a sign of confidence in the business, the board expects to recommend a final dividend of 0.25p, an increase of 25% on the previous year.
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, commented:
"Eckoh continues to experience significant sales momentum supported by our strong product pedigree and as we begin the new financial year we have developed our strongest ever sales pipeline. We are fast becoming the provider of choice for PCI DSS compliant payment solutions and this is underpinning our sales growth, coupled with the increased breadth of our indirect sales channels this will enable us to target more significant contracts going forward.
"The board continues to remain confident in the future growth prospects of the Company."
Enquiries:
Eckoh plc
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer
Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director
www.eckoh.com Tel: 01442 458 300
Buchanan
Jeremy Garcia, Gabriella Clinkard Tel: 020 7466 5000
N+1 Singer
Shaun Dobson Tel: 020 7496 3000
Notes to Editors:
About Eckoh plc
Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK) is the UK's leading provider of speech recognition and payment solutions across voice, web and mobile channels. We are a PCI DSS Level One accredited Service Provider, currently processing over £250 million in card payments annually.
Eckoh's solutions enable payments, transactions and enquiries to be processed without the caller needing to talk to a contact centre agent. This significantly reduces our clients' costs, whilst freeing up their agents to deal with more complex enquiries. Eckoh is the largest provider of such hosted services in the UK.
Our secure and resilient infrastructure has the scalability to handle up to 8,000 calls simultaneously, which means that calls will always be answered no matter how unpredictable the circumstances.
For more information, visit: www.eckoh.com