Trading Statement

RNS Number : 8094C

EMIS Group PLC

22 January 2015

 

Press Release                                                                                        22 January 2015

EMIS Group plc

("EMIS Group" or "the Group")

Trading update for the year ended 31 December 2014

Notice of final results

EMIS Group plc (AIM: EMIS.L), the UK leader in connected healthcare software and services, today announces a trading update for the year ended 31 December 2014.

Overview

Trading for the year was in line with management expectations, with revenue growth of approximately 30%, including a double digit percentage organic increase. The Group continues to benefit from significant revenue visibility. The Group's Primary Care market share remained broadly unchanged, with Community Pharmacy's market share maintained, further market share growth in Community, Child and Mental Health (CCMH) and contract wins in Secondary & Specialist Care.

Divisional review

In Primary & Community Care EMIS Web for GPs is now live in 4,261 practices (2013: 3,327 practices). The roll-out programme in England is almost complete, and in Wales all the Group's practices are scheduled to have transitioned to EMIS Web by the end of 2015. In Northern Ireland, practices will begin to upgrade to EMIS Web for the first time in the latter part of the year.

The procurements of Lots 1 and 2 of the English GP Systems of Choice (GPSoC) and of the Northern Ireland GP frameworks all reached a successful conclusion during 2014 and the procurement of Lot 3 GPSoC is progressing as expected. 

The Group continued its momentum in CCMH with a growing pipeline over the year including, in addition to a number of previously announced wins, a new contract win in Bristol. In the last quarter, the Group has continued this positive progress with the signing of contracts in Glasgow and South Tyneside.

Finally, the monthly number of visitors to the Group's authoritative patient-facing online service, under the Patient brand, rose to 17 million in December compared with 11 million at the end of 2013.  

In Community Pharmacy, the Group had another successful year maintaining its significant market share, launching a suite of integrated products enabling direct connections between pharmacists, GPs and patients, and building its next generation pharmacy product ready for piloting later in 2015.   

In Secondary & Specialist Care further contract wins were secured by the Secondary Care division in hospitals including Birmingham & Solihull. In Barwon, Australia, a business intelligence platform to support and improve existing clinical and operational practices will be delivered over the next two years. Preferred bidder status was awarded for the provision of IT services for emergency and unscheduled care in Wales. While the later than anticipated securing of certain contracts has delayed the recognition of some revenues into 2015, the strong order book and pipeline are encouraging for further progress in the coming year.

During 2014, the Specialist Care division completed the roll-out of upgraded diabetic retinopathy software to comply with the requirements of Public Health England and won its first two hosting contracts in Kent and Wales.

Indigo 4, acquired in July, is performing well and the Group is also excited by the opportunities presented by the December acquisition of Medical Imaging, a leading provider of services delivering diabetic eye screening and ophthalmology imaging to the NHS in England with an expanding position in Ireland. Both acquisitions are expected to enhance the Group's earnings in 2015.

Integrated care

In September the Group announced its first international whole healthcare economy contract, to deliver a fully integrated electronic patient record for Gibraltar. This contract clearly demonstrates the importance of the work being undertaken progressively to link and integrate all of the Group's products.

Financial position

At the period end the Group's net debt was £11.8 million (2013: £13.5 million).  £9.7 million of initial net cash consideration was paid in the second half for the acquisitions of Indigo 4 and Medical Imaging.

Notice of final results

The Group intends to announce its final results for the year ended 31 December 2014 on 19 March 2015. 

Chris Spencer, CEO, said:

"EMIS Group has delivered strong growth and fresh prospects in 2014: we traded in line with our expectations, secured significant Primary Care frameworks, virtually completed the roll-out to English GPs of EMIS Web, won significant CCMH and Secondary Care contracts, consolidated our position in Community Pharmacy, and broadened our offerings by acquisition in Specialist Care."

"The NHS's Five Year Forward View strategy document expressly states its commitment to fully interoperable electronic health records so that patients' records are largely paperless, available to clinicians wherever treatment is provided, and can be accessed by patients. As custodians of well over 40 million such records, across every major area of healthcare, we remain uniquely placed to help provide faster, better and cheaper healthcare through connected software and services. We are confident about the outlook for EMIS in 2015."

For further information, contact:

EMIS Group plc                                                             Tel: [phone]

Chris Spencer, CEO

Peter Southby, CFO

www.emis-online.com / @newsfromemis

Numis Securities Limited                                             Tel: [phone]

Adrian Trimmings/Simon Willis/James Black

MHP Communications                                           

Reg Hoare/Giles Robinson/Charlie Barker                      Tel: [phone]

Notes to Editors

EMIS Group is the UK leader in connected healthcare software and services. Its solutions are widely used across every major UK healthcare setting from primary and community care, to high street pharmacies, secondary care and specialist services. Through integration and interoperability, EMIS Group helps clinicians share vital information, facilitating better, more efficient healthcare and supporting longer and healthier lives.

EMIS Group serves the following healthcare settings:

•           Primary & Community Care, under the EMIS brand, the UK leader in clinical IT systems for GPs and commissioners. EMIS Group products, including the flagship EMIS Web, hold over 40 million patient records and are used by nearly 6,000 healthcare organisations, including community-based teams. EMIS's Patient website is the UK's leading independent provider of patient-centric medical and well-being information and related transactional services.

•           Community Pharmacy, under the Rx Systems brand, the UK's single most used integrated community pharmacy and retail system.

•           Secondary & Specialist Care, under the Ascribe and Digital Healthcare brands. Ascribe is a leading software provider to 70% of the UK's NHS Acute Trusts and Boards, focused primarily on hospital pharmacy, A&E (holding over 30 million patient records), mental health, order communications and Patient Administration Systems.  Digital Healthcare is England's leading provider of diabetic eye screening and other ophthalmology-related services and solutions.

These markets are also supported, under the Egton brand, by the provision of specialist ICT infrastructure, software, hardware and engineering services.

 

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