Trading Update

RNS Number : 8140B

Eckoh PLC

23 April 2012

 



For immediate release                                                                                                                  23 April 2012

Eckoh plc

("Eckoh" or "the Company")

Trading Update and contract win

Eckoh, the UK's leading provider of speech recognition and associated payment solutions across voice, web and mobile channels, provides a trading update for the 12 months ended 31 March 2012 ahead of its full year results to be announced on 12 June 2012.

The Company continues to experience significant growth across its operations and is pleased to confirm that results for the year ended 31 March 2012 will be in line with market expectations.

This strong performance has been achieved against a background of further investment in our technology platform and the acquisition of key people for our business and will signify the fourth successive year of double digit revenue growth for Eckoh.

The Group has continued to expand the size of its VoiceXML speech recognition platform, while increasing office space by 50% and creating a new development team to deliver customer care mobile applications to complement our existing offering. This increased level of investment will remain in order to ensure that the high levels of demand for speech enabled services currently being experienced within the market continue to be maximised by the Group, and that our market leading position is maintained. 

As highlighted in 2011, we are also establishing additional sales channels with a number of organisations from whom we are seeing an increased demand for our solutions from their customers. In particular this is being driven by the growing demand for our EckohPAY and EckohPROTECT payment solutions, as increasing pressure is being applied on organisations to process card payments in a manner that is compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). As an example we have today announced a partnership with Azzurri which has delivered a 2 year contract with Essex County Council through which we will provide a range of automated customer care services.

Against this background, the Board remain confident in the Company's prospects and anticipate the trend of growth in recent years is set to continue. It remains the intention of the Board to pursue a progressive dividend policy with further details to be announced on the level of dividend as part of the full year result announcement.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, said:

"It is with great satisfaction that we confirm Eckoh has delivered significant growth whilst investing in the long-term future of the business. With global brands such as Apple, Google and Microsoft continuing to popularise the use of speech recognition, the interest in our speech technology has never been higher.

"Equally, the interest in Eckoh's payment solutions which help organisations overcome the challenge of PCI DSS continues to accelerate and we are now selling these through a wider group of partners. We would expect the number of contracts from this area to increase in the current financial year and remain very confident in the future growth prospects of the Company."

Ends

Enquiries:

Eckoh plc

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer

Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director

www.eckoh.com                                                                                                   Tel: [phone]

Singer Capital Markets

Shaun Dobson                                                                                                     Tel: [phone]

Buchanan          

Jeremy Garcia, Nicola Cronk, Gabriella Clinkard                                                      Tel: [phone]

Notes to Editors:

About Eckoh plc

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK) is the UK's leading provider of speech recognition and payment solutions across voice, web and mobile channels. We are a PCI DSS Level One accredited Service Provider, currently processing over £250 million in card payments annually.

Eckoh's solutions enable payments, transactions and enquiries to be processed without the caller needing to talk to a contact centre agent. This significantly reduces our clients' costs, whilst freeing up their agents to deal with more complex enquiries. Eckoh is the largest provider of such hosted services in the UK.

Our secure and resilient infrastructure has the scalability to handle  up to 8,000 calls simultaneously, which means that calls will always be answered no matter how unpredictable the circumstances.

For more information, visit: www.eckoh.com

 

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