Tribal Grp. Regulatory News (TRB)

Tribal Group plc

Acquisition of Callista Software Services Pty Ltd

Tribal Group plc ("Tribal"), a leading provider of software and services for education management, is pleased to announce that it has acquired the entire issued share capital of Callista Software Services Pty Ltd (Callista), a leading provider of student management systems to the Australian university market.

Callista provides its software to 25% of Australian universities. The Callista student management system is a mature software product, and the business benefits from long-standing relationships with its customers. It is based in Geelong and Melbourne, Australia.

Tribal's acquisition of Callista provides support for the existing Callista software platform over an initial seven year period, and the opportunity for members of the customer base to migrate to the current Tribal university software platform over time. The transaction will also offer synergistic benefits through sharing of intellectual property, know-how and resources in combination with Tribal's existing Australian business.

The acquisition is expected to be earnings accretive in its first full year. The unaudited revenue of Callista for the year ended 31 December 2014 was AUD 15.9m, and operating profit was AUD 1.6m. The value of gross assets at 31 December 2014 was AUD 14.1m. Total consideration for the entire issued share capital is AUD 3.6m, payable in cash in equal instalments over a three year period.

Keith Evans, Chief Executive of Tribal, commented: "This transaction continues Tribal's development in Australia, and allows us swiftly to offer our proven university software capabilities to an increased number of new customers across Australia. Following our acquisition of Sky Software and Human Edge in 2014, and our recently announced contract wins in Queensland and Tasmania, Tribal is now a leading student management software provider to each of the university, college and schools markets in Australia."

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Editors' note:

Tribal supports the delivery of education, learning and training services around the world. We build world-leading software, support adult learning, careers and professional development and provide school inspections and improvement services both in the UK and internationally.

We work in partnership with a wide range of organisations, including schools, colleges and universities, prisons and social services, government agencies and large and small employers.

Tribal has around 1,400 staff and our work spans five continents across the world. More information about Tribal is available online at www.tribalgroup.com. 

This Statement has been prepared for and is addressed only to our shareholders as a whole and should not be relied on by any other party or for any other purpose. Tribal, its directors, employees, agents or advisers do not accept or assume responsibility to any other person to whom this Statement is shown or into whose hands it may come and any such responsibility or liability is expressly disclaimed. This Statement may contain forward-looking statements and the financial information is unaudited. Any forward-looking statement has been made by the directors in good faith based on the information available to them up to the time of approval of this Statement and should be treated with caution due to the inherent uncertainties, including both economic and business risk factors, underlying such forward-looking information. To the extent that this Statement contains any statement dealing with any time after the date of its preparation, such statement is merely predictive and speculative as it relates to events and circumstances which are yet to occur and therefore the facts stated and views expressed may change. Tribal undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.