Earthport Regulatory News (EPO)

8 Oct 2008 07:00



8 October 2008

Earthport plc ("Earthport") or ("the Company")

Trading Update

Earthport, the global payments utility, is pleased to announce an unaudited revenue figure of £2.51million for the financial year ended 30 June 2008. This figure is in line with market expectations and is an increase of 128% over the revenue of £1.1million recorded for the financial year ended 30 June 2007.

There has been a strong start to the new fiscal year with activities progressing ahead of schedule. The Company is rapidly growing its business as the payments utility for high volume transactions for Financial Institutions.

The Company has been concentrating on reducing costs, which has resulted in significant debt reduction, leading to the eradication of all debt in the near term. This will contribute to an improved balance sheet, encouraging new clients. As a result of the move towards profitability, the process of unlocking the tax losses built up over Earthport's past can begin and this, in turn, will help boost the Company's balance sheet.

Strategy 

The liquidity crunch facing the worlds' banks is an encouraging factor in Earthport's banking network expansion as the banks in the network maintain pools of liquidity from Earthport's clients and receive the interest. In addition the high volume low-risk fee-earning businesses, like transaction banking, are becoming an important part of banks' offerings to their customers, a service which Earthport delivers to banks at advantageous terms in white label format.

Earthport recently attended Sibos in conjunction with IBM in Vienna and subsequently there is a strong pipeline of prospects for the Company to follow up. As well as introductions from IBM, the Company was active in promoting the TS Lite trade services product for banks, developed jointly with Adobe. Using Earthport to facilitate low level international trade lowers the risk for a bank offering this service to its SME customers. Earthport also secured a partnership with Experian Limited to provide its customers with access to Earthport's UPN through Experian's Payments Gateway.

Neil Burton, recently joined Earthport as Director of Product Service Strategy. Neil has joined the Company to develop the Earthport service for banks. He was previously Global Payments Solutions Executive in IBM's Global Banking Solutions team and was instrumental in putting Earthport and IBM together at Sibos in 2007 and 2008.

Earthport continues to see considerable demand and activity in the Asia-Pacific region and further news on the development and execution of its strategy in that region will follow.

In addition, the Company's business is growing organically in line with management's expectations. Examples of this include the signing of a new contract with DataCash (DATA.L) and other clients reaffirming their commitment and increasing their levels of business with the Company.

James Bergman, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"We are delivering an innovative service to financial institutions and corporates, which enables them to collect and pay out funds internationally in a highly efficient manner. It is encouraging to see growth from existing clients and exciting to contract with new ones. The Company continues to develop its specialist position and is well placed to capitalise on the success of Sibos 2008."

Mike Harrison, Executive Chairman said:

"It is pleasing to see the Company advancing on all fronts. The increase in business is backed up by the proliferation of the banking network and all is made possible by the quality of the technology. In addition, the rebuilding of the balance sheet is giving the Company a solid base from which to progress."

It is expected that the Annual Report and Accounts will be published in the first week of November. The Annual General Meeting will be held on Friday 12 December.

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About Earthport 

Earthport (www.earthport.com) specialises in the international transactional marketplace by providing a highly secure, high volume global collection and payment capability. It has been making national and international payments and collections since 1998. 

Earthport owns, provides and hosts an international money movement platform called the Universal Payments Network. Using this platform, Earthport makes secure, low cost international bank payments and collections worldwide.

About DataCash

DataCash (www.datacash.com) provides Merchants with a single interface that allows them to process secure payments, both on and offline, anywhere in the world.

DataCash also offers a range of value added services with its fraud and Risk Management solutions supporting AVS/CV2 and 3-D Secure together with traditional rules-based screening.

DataCash provides first-class service reliability at a fraction of the price of an in-house solution, servicing clients within the retail, travel, telecommunications and gaming sectors.

In 2006 DataCash Group plc (AIM:DATA) acquired ProcCyber Services Ltd and the enlarged group was re-listed on AIM on the 1st June 2006.

DataCash has a market cap of circa £260 million, over £17.9 million in cash and processed over £12 billion of transactions in 2007.