Final results -year ended 31 March & Notice of AGM

RNS Number : 5312S

D4T4 Solutions PLC

26 June 2018

 

D4t4 Solutions Plc

(the "group", "D4t4" or "company")

'ALL ABOUT THE DATA'

Final results for the year ended 31 March 2018

and

Notice of Annual General Meeting

London: Tuesday 26 June 2018:  D4t4 Solutions Plc (AIM: D4T4) publishes the group's audited Annual report and financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2018 which is available to view and download at www.d4t4solutions.com.  A summary is provided below:

Performance summary:

·      The financial year recorded another strong year of profitable growth for the group and culminated in the signing of the two largest contracts in the group's history -  D4t4 has also witnessed the continuing evolution of its business into the data and analytics market space with a focus on growing the Celebrus software customer base and the group's hybrid cloud data platform services

·      D4t4 has also successfully achieved notable sales success in North America following its recent sales and marketing investment in the region

·      During the period D4t4 have seen a shift in the mix of sales within the group.  Firstly, through the growth in the demand for term or recurring licence sales of our Celebrus product set which had an impact on the perpetual licence sales that it has been used to in the past however, this has had the beneficial effect of increasing recurring revenue. Secondly, we have seen an increase in demand for our hybrid cloud data platform services which have developed well in the year particularly in the North American market.

Key performance indicators Summary financials continuing operations (audited)	Year ended 31 March 2018	Year ended 31 March 2017	Year on year growth
Revenue:
Licence sales Projects Recurring income	£2.90m £12.41m £4.78m	£3.71m £9.47m £4.49m	-21.82% +31.06% +6.53%
Total revenue	£20.09m	£17.67m	+13.71%
Gross profit	£11.52m	£9.86m	+16.74%
GP margin	57.31%	55.82%	+2.67%
Profit before tax	£4.40m	£4.24m	+3.72%
Adjusted profit before tax*	£5.15m	£4.22m	+22.04%
Basic earnings per share	9.90p	10.49p	-5.61%
Adjusted diluted earnings per share	11.01p	9.97p	+10.43%
Unadjusted diluted earnings per share	9.49p	10.02p	-5.33%
Dividend for the period	2.50p	2.25p	+11.11%
Net current assets**	£7.08m	£5.55m	+27.37%

*before amortisation of intangibles, share-based payments charges and foreign exchange gains

**reflects the increased level of trade debtors 2018 £19.53m (2017: £3.66m) due to the business weighting occurring late in the second half

Peter Kear, D4t4's CEO commented:

"I am delighted to report a 13.71% increase in organic top-line growth with total revenues for the group rising to £20.09m.  Importantly, we have been able to maintain our gross profit margins through a combination of product sales, our hybrid cloud data platform services business and our recurring revenue business, which has resulted in a 22% growth in underlying profitability yielding an adjusted pre-tax profit for the group of £5.15m."

"Our strategy continues to deliver and is reflected in our strong profit growth.  The business enters the new financial year in robust shape after achieving record bookings in the second half year under review - we are encouraged by the opportunities and outlook for the business in the coming year."

ENQUIRIES

D4t4 Solutions Plc Peter Kear, Chief Executive Officer Carmel Warren, Chief Financial Officer Tel: [phone] Email: [e-mail]

finnCap (Nominated adviser & broker) Adrian Hargrave/Emily Watts - Corporate Finance Stephen Norcross - Corporate Broking Tel: [phone]

TooleyStreet Communications (IR & media relations) Fiona Tooley: Tel: [phone] or email: [e-mail]

EDITOR'S NOTE - D4t4 Solutions Plc 'ALL ABOUT THE DATA' D4t4 Solutions Plc operates within the fast-growing data and analytics market.  This market encompasses 'big data', artificial intelligence, machine learning and the business intelligence market; this market which has been estimated to be valued at U$150 billion by the global independent analyst International Data Corporation (IDC), with a projected growth of 11.9% annually until 2020 when the market is anticipated to be worth U$210 billion. The business is focused on the finance and consumer sectors.  The specific areas of focus for D4t4 are data and analytics related to the collection of data on how consumers interact with digital channels, the management and analysis of that data and the implementation of cost effective platforms to assist companies get real value from their data assets.  Celebrus, our software product, is a customer data platform that is in a market, according to research by the Customer Data Platform Institute (CPDI), that is expected to grow from £300m in 2016 to £1bn in 2019. We service clients in 21 countries. Our people and intellectual property combine to create four core capabilities: v Data capture software (Celebrus) and skills v Data management facilities and skills v Data analytics capabilities and solutions  v Data platforms that are on premise or in the cloud and combine hardware, software and services. We are energetically focused on data platforms that enable clients who operate within the financial services, retail and consumer sectors to get the most from their data. From capture, through to management and analysis, we provide comprehensive products and services that drive value from our clients' information assets.  We are accredited to ISO27001: Information Security Management and PCI Data Security Standard.   To find out more, visit www.d4t4solutions.com

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the company to constitute inside information stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014.

The following information is a summary taken from the group's

audited Annual report and financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2018, which is available to view and download at www.d4t4solutions.com   

D4t4 Solutions Plc

'ALL ABOUT THE DATA'

"Our focus on providing the best real time data collection platform in the industry continues and this coupled with our private cloud data platform solutions leaves us well placed to take advantage of the market need for real time, accurate, customer data and finding better ways to analyse and use that data"

Peter Simmonds

Non-Executive Chairman

Extracts from the Chairman's letter to shareholders:

2017-2018 annual financial results recorded another very successful year for the group.

The year began with a lower than expected first half performance due primarily to longer than expected sales cycles.  This was more than offset by a record second half during which we booked the two largest contracts in our group's history and ended up delivering both revenues and profits in excess of the previous year.  

Operations

This past year has seen investment in a whole range of new operational process initiatives, with our executive team implementing a wide range of improvements that include our customer relationship management (CRM), accounting, management support and reporting systems.  The most noticeable difference is that the business is now more nimble, robust and able to engage more easily with our clients and the market that we operate in.  Some of these activities span more than a year and so I look forward to updating you at a later stage with what I believe will be significant further progress.

People

At 31 March 2018, the group employed 128 staff in its operations located in India, EMEA and the USA.  

We have always been very proud of the increasingly diverse culture of the group and D4t4 prides itself on a family ethos that can be felt in every location, no matter where that is in the world.  During the year we have seen significant increases in our Indian development and support teams along with investment globally in sales and marketing, pre-sales and consulting.  This growth has delivered substantial benefits during the last twelve months and will continue to do so in the future.

Outlook

Going forward, our focus remains on the collection, management and analysis of data thereby assisting our clients to derive considerable value from their customer data and on delivering highly scalable, analytical platforms with our hybrid cloud analytic services.  

The first few months of the year have started in line with our plan and we continue to attract new partners, new opportunities and new clients.  This leads us to be confident for the year ahead.  As a group we have invested in our people, our systems and our products and we look forward to keeping you up to date on progress during what looks to be a very interesting and profitable year.

D4t4 Solutions Plc

25 June 2018

D4t4 Solutions Plc

'ALL ABOUT THE DATA'

"Our clients operate in markets where in many cases the only differentiation that they have from their competitors is how well they understand and interact with their customers and how quickly they can capitalise on that customer interaction.  All of which drives increasing demand for more scalable and cost-effective, compliant data collection and analytical platforms"

Peter Kear

Chief Executive Officer

Extracts from the CEO's report to shareholders:

Overview

D4t4 has continued to build upon our previously stated strategic objectives of "empowering our clients to gain significant value from their customer data and through this to deliver major uplifts in terms of their revenues and profitability".

Vision and strategy 

Our business vision is to earn high-margin, recurring revenues by creating the innovative data platform software and building the data platform solutions that financial services institutions and consumer focussed organisations need to power their artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, compliance, marketing and customer experience initiatives.

To deliver the vision our strategy is to focus our activity on two complementary areas that financial services and consumer organisations are investing in today and will continue to invest in for the foreseeable future:

·      Increasing revenues derived from our customer data platform, Celebrus, generates high margin sales in the short-term as well as building a longer-term recurring revenue stream and creating more platform opportunities

·      Generating recurring income through developing, deploying and managing 'big data' platforms that combine the services, software and hardware needed to help our clients get strategic advantage from their data by deploying artificial intelligence and advanced analytics

This strategy will be achieved by evolving our business based upon our core values of innovation, trust, collaboration and security and, by growing or enhancing the required core capabilities of data collection, data platforms, data management and data analytics.

Summary review of the 2017-2018 financial year

D4t4 has had another successful financial year.  Our business has delivered revenues of £20.09 million (2017: £17.67m) a 13.71% increase on the previous year (this is an 18.5% increase in constant currency terms) and produced an adjusted profit before tax of £5.15m (2017: £4.22m).  This solid growth has been driven by an increase in gross profit margin (GP) to 57.31% which was ahead of market expectations and the previous year (2017: 55.82%).

The group remains strongly cash generative however, due to the stronger second half weighting, net cash reserves were at £3.85m compared to £5.09 million the previous year, this therefore resulted in trade debtors being far higher than previous and finished at £19.53m (2017: £3.66m).  

As we have indicated earlier, we have invested in our partner, sales and pre-sales teams, particularly in North America and EMEA, the outcome of which we are pleased to report is the winning of several significant major contracts with both new and existing clients.  We have also invested in our partner-based sales strategy and, in 2018, we will continue to scale up these relationships which will pay rewards both this year and in the future.

During the last 12 months we have seen a shift in the mix of sales within the group; firstly, through the growth in the demand for term or recurring licence sales of our Celebrus product set which had an impact on the perpetual licence sales that we have been used to in the past but has had the beneficial effect of increasing our recurring revenue.  Celebrus sales now represent 21.72% of group revenue; secondly, we have seen an increase in demand for our hybrid cloud analytics services which have developed well in the year particularly in the North American market.  These combined with the ongoing development of our business to the more profitable data and analytics projects and associated recurring revenues has assisted in delivering the overall strong group profit level.  

Our Projects business has had a strong year delivering an 31.06% increase in year-on year sales to £12.41 million, (2017: £9.47m).  This robust performance over the previous year provides us with a good level of contract visibility into the immediate future.  Recurring revenues from our managed private cloud data platform and software licence recurring revenue services business delivered income of £4.78 million (2017: £4.49m).  As mentioned previously this steady growth in performance was due in part to the increase in our Celebrus annuity revenues during the year as more clients move to a term licence arrangement.

Gross profit in the period was £11.52m (2017: £9.86m) whilst profit before tax was £4.40m against £4.24m in 2017.  Administration costs were £7.15m (2017: £5.63m).  Therefore, reported profit from operations is £4.43m (2017: £4.29m) and adjusted profit for the year is £5.15m (2017: £4.22m) before tax.  This includes a foreign exchange loss for the year of £0.40m (2017: £0.36m gain).  Debtors grew from £4.27m to £20.54m due to timing of contracts.  Cash and cash equivalents at 31March 2018 stood at £4.63m (2017: £6.29m), this as we said above reflects the increased level of trade debtors 2018 £19.53m (2017: £3.66m) due to the business weighting occurring late in the second half.  Total net assets at the end of the year were £20.99m compared to £17.55m in March 2017. Adjusted fully diluted earnings per share grew 10.43% to 11.01 pence (2017: 9.97p), unadjusted diluted EPS was 9.49 pence (2017: 10.02 pence) down some 5.33%.

Dividend

The group remains committed to a progressive dividend policy whilst balancing its investments for future growth.  It is the Board's intention to declare future dividends based on the overall performance, with appropriate cover in the range of 3-4 times.  

The Board is recommending a final dividend of 1.875p, which, if approved by shareholders at the Annual General Meeting which is to be held on the 23 August 2018, will be paid on 14 September 2018 to Members on the Register at the close of business on 10 August 2018.  The Ordinary shares become ex-dividend on 9 August 2018.

Outlook

As documented in our trading update released in April during the last quarter of the year under review we signed two significant contracts which are also the biggest in our group's history.  From an income perspective one was recognised in March 2018 while the other will be recognised during the coming financial year.  We have also recently delivered our first implementations of Celebrus as a Service, our cloud-based deployment, which bodes well for the future. 

All of this exciting news and progress gives us an excellent start to the current year and, coupled with a growing opportunity pipeline and even greater cooperation with our growing list of business partners the Board remains confident in the future of the business and believes that it has a clear strategy in place to develop the opportunities that will deliver sustainable growth and enable us to achieve the ambitious plans for the year ahead.

D4t4 Solutions Plc

25 June 2018

D4t4 Solutions Plc

Summary of Financial Statements

for the year ended 31 March 2018

CONSOLIDATED INCOME STATEMENT for the year ended 31 March
	2018	2017
	£'000	£'000
Continuing operations
Revenue	20,092	17,670
Cost of sales	(8,577)	(7,806)
Gross profit	11,515	9,864
Administration expenses	(7,151)	(5,631)
Other operating income	67	55
Profit from operations	4,431	4,288
Finance income	1	1
Finance costs	(31)	(46)
Profit before tax	4,401	4,243
Tax	(628)	(340)
Profit for the year attributable to owners of the parent	3,773	3,903
Earnings per share from continuing operations
Statutory
Basic	9.90p	10.49p
Diluted	9.49p	10.02p
Adjusted
Basic	11.49p	10.44p
Diluted	11.01p	9.97p

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME for the year ended 31 March
	2018	2017
	£'000	£'000
Attributable to the owners of the parent	3,733	3,903
Other comprehensive income:
Items that will not be reclassified to profit or loss
Gains on property revaluation	706	47
Income tax on items that will no be reclassified to profit or loss	-	-
Total comprehensive income for the year attributable to equity holders of the parent	4,479	3,950

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CHANGES IN EQUITY ATTRIBUTABLE TO OWNERS OF THE PARENT for the year ended 31 March
	Share capital	Share premium	Merger reserve	Revaluation reserve	Own shares	Equity reserve	Retained earnings	Total £'000
Balance as at 1 April 2016	732	1,893	5,225	276	(23)	940	5,602	14,645
Dividends paid	1	-	20	-	-	6	(780)	(753)
Purchase of own shares	-	-	-	-	(175)	-	-	(175)
Issue of new shares -  exercise of share options	10	30	175	-	-	(53)	-	162
Settlement of share-based payments	-	-	-	-	192	(68)	(298)	(174)
Issue of shares from equity reserve	16	-	384	-	-	(400)	-	-
Share-based payment charge	-	-	-	-	-	-	86	86
Transactions with owners	27	30	579	-	17	(515)	(992)	(854)
Profit for the year	-	-	-	-	-	-	3,903	3,903
Other comprehensive income	-	-	-	47	-	-	-	47
Total comprehensive income	-	-	-	47	-	-	3,903	3,950
Rate change on deferred tax	-	-	-	-	-	(45)	30	(15)
Deferred tax on outstanding share options	-	-	-	-	-	(138)	(39)	(177)
Balance as at 1 April 2017	759	1,923	5,804	323	(6)	242	8,504	17,549
Dividends paid	-	-	-	-	-	-	(884)	(884)
Purchase of own shares	-	-	-	-	(302)	-	-	(302)
Issue of new shares - exercise of share options	6	49	113	-	-	(51)	-	117
Settlement of share-based payments	-	-	-	-	-	-	(20)	(20)
Share-based payment charge	-	-	-	-	-	-	100	100
Transactions with owners	6	49	113	-	(302)	(51)	(804)	(989)
Profit for the year	-	-	-	-	-	-	3,773	3,773
Other comprehensive income	-	-	-	706	-	-	-	706
Total comprehensive income	-	-	-	706	-	-	3,773	4,479
Deferred tax on outstanding share options	-	-	-	-	-	(58)	4	(54)
Balance as at 31 March 2018	765	1,972	5,917	1,029	(308)	133	11,477	20,985

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION as at 31 March
	2018 £'000	2017 £'000
Non-current assets
Goodwill	8,696	8,696
Other intangible assets	1,261	1,507
Property, plant and equipment	3,892	2,595
Deferred tax assets	389	230
	14,238	13,028
Current assets
Trade and other receivables	20,544	4,269
Inventories	-	341
Cash and cash equivalents	4,634	6,290
	25,178	10,900
Total assets	39,416	23,928
Current liabilities
Trade and other payables	(16,910)	(4,922)
Tax liabilities	(495)	-
Borrowings	(695)	(421)
	(18,100)	(5,343)
Non-current liabilities
Borrowings	(85)	(780)
Deferred tax liabilities	(246)	(256)
	(331)	(1,036)
Total liabilities	(18,431)	(6,379)
Net assets	20,985	17,549
Equity
Share capital	765	759
Share premium account	1,972	1,923
Merger reserve	5,917	5,804
Revaluation reserve	1,029	323
Treasury share reserve	(308)	(6)
Equity reserve	133	242
Retained earnings	11,477	8,504
Attributable to equity holders of the parent	20,985	17,549

CONSOLIDATED CASH FLOW STATEMENT for the year ended 31 March
	2018 £'000	2017 £'000
Operating activities
Profit before tax	4,401	4,243
Adjustments for:
Depreciation of property, plant and equipment	251	221
Amortisation of intangible assets	246	247
Finance income	(1)	(1)
Finance expense	31	46
Share-based payments	100	86
Settlement of share-based payments	(20)	(172)
Gain on sale of property, plant and equipment	-	(1)
Operating cash flows before movements in working capital	5,008	4,669
Exchange loss / (gain) on cash and cash equivalents	116	(305)
Increase in receivables	(16,275)	(1,512)
Decrease / (Increase) in inventories	341	(341)
Increase / (Decrease) in payables	12,034	(123)
Cash generated from operations	1,224	2,388
Income taxes paid	(400)	(26)
Net cash generated from operating activities	824	2,362
Investing activities
Interest received	1	1
Purchase of property, plant and equipment	(844)	(162)
Net cash used in investing activities	(843)	(161)
Financing activities
Dividends paid	(884)	(753)
Repayment of borrowings	(414)	(403)
Interest paid	(31)	(46)
Payments to finance lease creditors	(7)	(8)
Purchase of own shares	(302)	(175)
Sale of own shares	117	162
Net cash used in financing activities	(1,521)	(1,223)
Net (decrease) / increase in cash and cash equivalents	(1,540)	978
Cash and cash equivalents at start of year	6,290	5,007
Exchange loss / (gain) on cash and cash equivalents	(116)	305
Cash and cash equivalents at end of year	4,634	6,290

D4t4 Solutions Plc

Certain notes to the financial statements

GENERAL INFORMATION

D4t4 Solutions Plc is a public limited company incorporated and domiciled in England and Wales and quoted on the AIM Market, hence there is no one, ultimate controlling party.  The address of its registered office, registered number and principal place of business is disclosed on the inside cover of the financial statements.  The financial statements of D4t4 Solutions Plc and its subsidiaries (the group) for the year ended 31 March 2018 were authorised and issued by the Board of Directors on 25 June 2018 and the Consolidated statement of financial position was signed on the Board's behalf by Peter Kear. The statutory accounts for the year ended 31 March 2018 will be delivered to the Registrar of Companies following the group's Annual General Meeting and can be obtained from the investor section of the group's website at www.d4t4solutions.com.  Statutory accounts for the year ended 31 March 2017 have been filed with the Registrar of Companies.  The auditor's report for the year ended 31 March 2018 was unqualified, did not include a reference to any matter to which the auditor drew attention by way of emphasis without qualifying their report and did not contain any statement under section 498(2) or (3) of the Companies Act 2006. BASIS OF PREPARATION The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) adopted by the European Union and the Companies Act 2006 applicable to companies reporting under IFRS.  The financial statements have been prepared under the historical cost convention, with the exception of land and buildings which is held at valuation.  The presentation and functional currency of the financial statements is British Pounds and amounts are rounded to the nearest thousand pounds. The preliminary financial information does not constitute full statutory accounts within the meaning of section 434 of the Companies Act 2006 but is derived from statutory accounts for the periods ended 31 March 2018 and 31 March 2017, both of which are audited. The preliminary announcement is prepared on the same basis as set out in the statutory accounts for the year ended 31st March 2018. While the financial information included in this preliminary announcement has been prepared in accordance with the recognition and measurement criteria of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as adopted by the European Union (EU), this announcement does not itself contain sufficient information to comply with IFRSs. GOING CONCERN The group and company's business activities, together with the factors likely to affect its future development, performance and position and the risks and uncertainties are presented in the Strategic Report within the Annual Report.  The group and company have sufficient financial resources to cover budgeted future cashflows, together with contracts with a number of customers and suppliers across different geographic areas and industries.  As a consequence, the Directors believe that the group and company are well placed to manage their business risks successfully.  Having reviewed the future plans and projections for the business, the Directors believe that the group and company have adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future.  For this reason, they continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements.

ADOPTION OF NEW AND REVISED STANDARDS

Standards, amendments and interpretations effective in the period to 31 March 2018:

·      IAS 7 Statement of cash flows

·      IAS 12 Income taxes

Together with annual improvements, the adoption of these Standards has had no material impact on the results for the year ended 31 March 2018.

Standards, amendments and interpretations to existing standards that are not yet effective and have not been adopted early by the group

·      IFRS 2 Share-base payments

·      IFRS 9: Financial Instruments

·      IFRS 15: Revenue from contracts with customers

·      IFRS 16: Leases

IFRS 9 will be effective for the year ending 31 March 2019 onwards.

IFRS 9:  introduces:

-       New requirements for the classification and measurement of financial assets and financial instruments;

-       A new model for recognising provisions abased on expected credit losses; and

-       Simplified hedge accounting by aligning hedge   accounting more closely with an entity's risk management methodology.

The group has completed an assessment of the impact of IFRS 9 and it is expected that adoption will not have a material impact on Consolidated Income Statement or Statement of Financial Position.  IFRS 16 will be effective for the year ending 31 March 2020.

The directors anticipate that the adoption of the other Standards and Interpretations in future periods will have no material impact on the financial statements of the group.  IFRS 15 was issued in May 2014 and is effective for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2018.  The group will apply the standard for the first time in the half year report ending 30 September 2018 and the annual report ending 31 March 2019.

The new standard will replace existing accounting standards used to determine the measurement and timing of revenue recognition and requires an entity to align the recognition of revenue to the transfer of goods and services at an amount that the entity expects to be entitled to in exchange for those goods and services.

BUSINESS AND GEOGRAPHIC SEGMENTS

IFRS 8 Operating Segments requires operating segments to be identified on the basis of internal reports about components of the group that are regularly reviewed by the chief operating decision maker to allocate resources to the segments and assess their performance. 

The information presented to the Board of Directors for the purpose of resource allocation and assessment of segment performance is focused on the type of product sold.  The principal activity of the group is split into three categories of product and services sold:

·              Licence sales 

·              Project work

·              Recurring revenues

The reporting below is consistent with that provided to the Board of Directors

Continuing operations 2018
	Licence sales	Project work	Recurring revenues	Total
	£'000	£'000	£'000	£'000
Sale of goods	2,905	-	-	2,905
Services	-	12,407	5,012	17,419
Adjustment for agency basis	-	-	(232)	(232)
Reported revenue	2,905	12,407	4,780	20,092
Segment result (gross profit)	2,186	6,869	2,460	11,515
Other operating costs and income				(7,084)
Investing and financing activities				(30)
Profit before tax				4,401
Major customers (over 10% of revenue)
Customer 1	-	10,659	1,737	12,396

The accounting policies of the reportable segments are the same as the group's accounting policies described in note 2 of the Annual Report & Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2018. 

Continuing operations 2017
	Licence sales	Project work	Recurring revenues	Total
	£'000	£'000	£'000	£'000
External sales	3,716	9,467	4,825	18,008
Adjustment for agency basis	--	-	(338)	(338)
Reported revenue	3,716	9,467	4,487	17,670
Segment result (gross profit)	3,179	4,339	2,346	9,864
Other operating costs and income				(5,576)
Investing and financing activities				(45)
Profit before tax				4,243
Major customers (over 10% of revenue)
Customer 1	-	7,935	1,867	9,802
Customer 2	1,144	-	700	1,844

Geographic segments (group)
	2018 £'000	2017 £'000
England	3,586	2,012
Europe	2,409	4,021
Unites States of America (US)	12,636	10,947
Others	1,461	690
	20,092	17,670

EARNINGS PER SHARE

The calculation of earnings per share is based on profit attributable to owners of the parent and the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue during the year.  The adjusted earnings per share figures have been calculated based on earnings before adjusted items.  These have been presented to provide shareholders with an additional measure on the group's year-on-year performance.  For diluted earnings per share, the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue is adjusted to assume conversion of all dilutive potential ordinary shares arising from share options granted to employees where the excise price is less than market price of the group's 's ordinary shares at the year end.

Details of the adjusted earnings per share are set out below:

	2018 £'000	2017 £'000
Profit attributable to owners of the parent	3,773	3,903
Amortisation of intangible assets	246	247
Share-based payments	100	86
Net foreign exchange differences	402	(357)
Tax on the adjustments	(142)	5
Adjusted profit attributable to owners of the parent	4,379	3,884

		2018 Number	2017 Number
Basic weighted average number of shares, excluding own shares, in issue		38,104,967	37,193,118
Dilutive effect of share options		1,670,139	1,767,183
Diluted weighted average number of shares, excluding own shares, in issue		39,775,106	38,960,301

	2018 Pence per share	2017 Pence per share
Basic Earnings per share	9.90	10.49
Diluted Earnings per share	9.49	10.02
Adjusted Basic Earnings per share	11.49	10.44
Adjusted Diluted Earnings per share	11.01	9.97

DIVIDENDS
	2018 £'000	2017 £'000
Amounts recognised as distributions to equity holders Final dividend for the period ended 31 March 2017 of 1.70p (2016: 1.5p) per share Interim dividend for the year ended 31 March 2018 of 0.625p (31 March 2017: 0.55p) per share	645 239	574 206
	884	780
Proposed final dividend for the year ended 31 March 2018 of 1.875p

The proposed final dividend of 1.875p, which, subject to Shareholder approval at the Annual General Meeting to be held on the 23 August 2018 will be paid on 14 September 2018 to Members on the Register at the close of business on 10 August 2018.   The Ordinary shares become ex-dividend on 9 August 2018.  The proposed final dividend has not been included as a liability in these financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2018.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The Annual General Meeting will be held on 23 August 2018 at 10am at the group's Registered office: Windmill House, 91-93 Windmill Road, Sunbury on Thames, Middlesex, TW16 7EF.

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

D4t4 is not proposing to bulk print and distribute hard copies of this announcement.  The full Annual report and financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2018 is attached via the link on the front page of this statement and, it will be published shortly on the group's website at www.d4t4solutions.com together with the Notice convening the group's 2018 Annual General Meeting.  Copies of these publications will be sent out to those shareholders who have elected to receive paper communications.  Copies can also be requested via [e-mail] or by writing to: The Company Secretary, D4t4 Solutions Plc, Windmill House, 91-93 Windmill Road, Sunbury on Thames, Middlesex, TW16 7EF.  The group's news updates, regulatory news and financial statements, can also be viewed and downloaded from the group's website.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

The Board of Director's approved the Annual Report & Accounts on 25 June 2018.  This document contains certain forward-looking statements, which reflect the knowledge and information available to the c during the preparation and up to the publication of this document.  By their very nature, these statements depend upon circumstances and relate to events that may occur in the future thereby involving a degree of uncertainty.  Therefore, nothing in this document should be construed as a profit forecast by the company.

 

END

 

 

FR PGUAPQUPRPGA