Trading Update

RNS Number : 9989F

Eckoh PLC

01 May 2014

 



For Immediate Release                                                                                                                                  1 May 2014

Eckoh plc

("Eckoh" or "the Company")

Trading Update

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK), the UK's leading provider of multi-channel customer service and secure payment solutions,today announces that trading for the 12 months ended 31 March 2014 saw another period of strong progression with double digit growth in both revenue and margin, resulting in a substantial increase in adjusted* profit in line with market expectations.

The Company has performed strongly in the second half, leading to double digit organic growth for the full year supplemented by the acquisition of Veritape Limited in June 2013. We have been successful in winning a number of new contracts in the Travel, Logistics, Telecommunications and Retail sectors, the majority of which are clients within the FTSE100 and FTSE250. These new contracts will commence generating revenue in the coming year supporting growth expectations and this significant momentum has enabled Eckoh to maintain an excellent sales pipeline.  This growth is also underpinned by continued traction within Eckoh's established product portfolio and more recently with additional sales growth from Veritape.

Elsewhere, progress since launching Eckoh, Inc. in February 2014 is encouraging. The U.S. market for secure payment solutions, which is less well developed than that of the UK, is now accelerating as a direct result of a vast data breach suffered by the retail company Target in December 2013. Whilst we already have a small but established client base in the U.S., management believe that a promising opportunity for incremental growth exists within this market.

Eckoh maintains a strong balance sheet position with a cash balance of £7.3 million as at 31 March 2014 (£8.5m at 31 March 2013) which further underpins the Company's investment in services, sales and marketing initiatives as well as keeping open more strategic growth options.

The board remain extremely confident of our future prospects and will be recommending a full year dividend of 0.3125p per share, an increase of 25% on the previous year.

The Company will announce its Full Year results for the year ended 31 March 2014 on 10 June 2014.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, commented:

"We have had a strong second half winning some excellent new contracts as well as making good progress on our strategic plans to expand our footprint in the U.S market. The significant opportunity that we believe exists there following a shift in sentiment towards data security, combined with the breadth and flexibility of our established product portfolio, gives us every reason to be optimistic about the added scale that this market could bring to Eckoh.

We remain confident that Eckoh offers a unique proposition to our customers in a global market and alongside the sales opportunities we are working on with our channel partners in the UK we look forward to continuing to create further value for our shareholders."

*excluding amortisation of acquired intangible assets, acquisition costs and expenses relating to share based payments

Enquiries:

Eckoh plc

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer

Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director

www.eckoh.com                                                                                                                                 Tel: [phone]

Buchanan

Jeremy Garcia, Gabriella Clinkard                                                                                                Tel: [phone]

N+1 Singer

Shaun Dobson, Matthew Thomas                                                                                                Tel: [phone]

Notes to Editors:

About Eckoh plc

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK) is the UK's leading provider of multi-channel customer service and secure payment solutions. We are a PCI DSS Level One accredited Service Provider, currently processing over £300 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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