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19 Nov 2008 12:07
19 November 2008
Gresham Computing plc
("Gresham," "the Group" or "the Company")
Interim Management Statement
Period 1 July 2008 to 18 November 2008
Trading update
I am pleased to report that trading for the first 9 months of 2008 remained significantly ahead of that seen in the comparative period, with continued revenue growth in our real-time financial solutions business.
We made an adjusted EBITDA profit in the third quarter of 2008, adding to a similar profit delivered at the interim stage. This is a significant improvement from the losses in the comparative periods and is calculated excluding the profit on disposal of Redstone, noted below.
Current cash balances are broadly similar to those held at 30 June 2008.
Disposal of Redstone Software Inc
On 2 September 2008, we announced the disposal of our loss making testing and automation subsidiary Redstone Software Inc, realising a profit and net cash inflow on disposal of approximately £425,000.
We will continue to sharpen our focus on the core business and, as the opportunity arises, dispose of non-core businesses.
Business update
Against a backdrop of general economic uncertainty, we are seeing significant levels of interest for our core solutions as banks in particular come to terms with the new world economy, where information about cash is of paramount importance.
Following on from leads generated at SIBOS, the international banking conference held in September, we are currently working to secure a number of major opportunities with several banks that involve our cash reporting, deposit aggregation and supply chain finance solutions.
A major Australian retailer is the third buyer now live on our supply chain financing platform. Average annual financing throughput now exceeds US$1.25bn based on the early phase of platform deployment to buyers and their major suppliers, with plans to roll-out to the wider supplier base of general suppliers already underway. Our financial return increases as the solution becomes more deeply embedded within this general supplier base.
In September, we announced a new strategic partnership with Quadrem, the world's largest global supply chain portal delivering on-demand supply chain services and solutions to improve sourcing, procurement, electronic invoicing and supplier relationship management. Gresham, leveraging Quadrem's on-line community of over 60,000 suppliers, is able to offer banks the ability to provide both supply chain and supply chain financing capabilities on a global basis. The key is "certainty" when doing business on a global basis; achieving one view of the truth agreed between buyer, supplier and third parties such as banks, shipping agents etc. The supply chain network becomes a robust platform for doing business efficiently and with a high degree of certainty for all parties concerned. Since the announcement of our partnership with Quadrem, we have had strong indicative interest from a number of banks and we are currently pursuing these opportunities.
Our Storage business continued to establish a sound customer base for the new Storage Director appliance, focused on the HP Non Stop market and now with more recent sales success in the IBM AS400 market. We continue to focus on building this customer base further and are actively engaged with new customers for our solutions in these niche storage markets.
We are actively working to build on the improvements seen in the first 9 months for the remainder of the year and beyond.
Note: Adjusted EBITDA profit represents Un-audited Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation before non-cash share option charges and before the one-off profit on disposal of Redstone.
For further information, please contact:
Gresham Computing plc
Andrew Walton-Green, CEO +44 (0)20 7653 0200
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