Tribal Grp. Regulatory News (TRB)

2 June 2014

Tribal Group plc

Acquisition of Human Edge Software Corporation Pty Ltd

Tribal Group plc ("Tribal"), a leading provider of technology enabled management solutions to the international education, learning and training markets, is pleased to announce that it has acquired the entire share capital of Human Edge Software Corporation Pty Ltd ("Human Edge"), a provider of student management systems primarily to the Australian schools market.

Human Edge is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, with a software development centre based in Manila, Philippines. Human Edge systems support approximately 1,900 schools and education management organisations throughout Australia and South East Asia. 

The Human Edge installed customer base is predominantly in non-state operated Catholic and private schools in New South Wales and Victoria. This is highly complementary to the New South Wales state school network across which Tribal's software is currently being deployed through the New South Wales Student Administration and Learning Management (SALM) programme. Following completion of the SALM programme, Tribal expects to be providing student management systems to over 25% of schools across Australia.

The acquisition is expected to be earnings accretive in its first full year in the Tribal Group. Total consideration for the entire share capital of Human Edge on a debt-free/cash-free basis will be A$15.23 million, satisfied in cash.

The unaudited revenue and normalised operating profit of Human Edge for the year ended 30 June 2013 was A$7.3m and A$2.0m respectively and the value of gross assets at that date was A$13.0m.

Keith Evans, Chief Executive of Tribal, commented: "Our strategic focus is to deliver technology-based systems and solutions which support management teams across education institutions. Bringing together Human Edge with our work for the New South Wales SALM programme establishes Tribal as a leading provider of schools management solutions in Australia and enhances our existing global credentials in schools student management systems."

Ends

Editors' note:

Tribal is a leading provider of technology-enabled solutions to the education management market. We build world-leading education management software, and provide performance improvement and quality assurance solutions across universities, colleges and schools, in the UK and internationally.

We work in partnership with a wide range of organisations, including schools, colleges and universities, 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.