Final Results
Focus Solutions Group PLC
07 June 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 08 June 2004
Focus Solutions Group plc
Preliminary Results
Focus Solutions Group plc ("The Group" "Focus"), the leading provider of
customer management solutions for the financial services industry, today
announces its preliminary results for the year ended 31 March 2004.
Key Highlights
• Turnover down 18% to £5.4 million (2003: £6.6 million)
• goal:technology licence and related services revenue up 30% to £3.7
million (2003: £2.8 million)
• Loss before tax reduced by 90% to £0.4 million (2003: £3.8 million)
• First ever operating profit generated in second half of £0.1 million
(Second half 2003: £0.7 million operating loss)
• Cash and money market deposits of £1.5 million (2003: £1.7 million);
debt free
• Loss per share reduced to 1.0 pence (2003: 13.4 pence loss)
• Entry into UK mortgage market with contracts signed with Kensington
Mortgages Limited ("Kensington Mortgages") and Network Data Limited
("Network Data")
• Major contract wins during the year include:
• Winterthur Life UK
• The Exchange (Marlborough Stirling)
• Major UK Bank
Commenting on the results and prospects, John Streets, Chief Executive, said:
"The Group has continued to improve its financial performance during the year,
and has consolidated its leading position in the life and pensions market, with
all of the top ten insurers now using our software to transact business
electronically. We have also entered the mortgage and bancassurance markets
winning our first contracts in these important sectors. Investment in the
underlying technology has ensured that we retain our reputation as an innovator
in the use of XML. During the year, we launched XFormation to support the next
generation of web solutions, replacing HTML based forms.
Although we expect market conditions to remain challenging, we aim to capitalise
on our strong presence in the life and pensions market and build on our initial
wins in the mortgage and bancassurance sectors. Supporting our new product,
XFormation, and developing our partnerships will help us penetrate other market
sectors and geographies. Coupled with continued emphasis on containing costs, we
expect to further improve financial performance based on sustainable and
scalable revenue streams."
For further information please contact:
Focus:
John Streets, Chief Executive 01926 468 300
Martin Clements, Finance Director 077696 54527
Chairman's Statement
Business review
Last year, we promised to continue to reduce costs and to target resources to
maintain the Group's improving financial performance. This we have done. Despite
continued tough trading conditions in our core UK life and pensions market, I am
pleased to report that the Group has made excellent progress during the year.
Pre-Tax Losses were significantly reduced to £0.38 million, down from £3.8
million last year. During the second half of the year, the Group reported an
operating profit of £0.1 million and generated cash from trading for the first
time. These are landmark events in the Group's development.
Total sales revenues were down 18% to £5.4 million reflecting the changing mix
of revenue in the business as sales of goal:technology licences and services
continued to grow strongly, up 30%, and the completion of the major Point of
Sale (POS) solution developed for Norwich Union resulted in an anticipated
revenue decline. The business has matured during the year and given our recent
success in entering new market sectors, we look to the future with optimism.
The Group has continued to expand its market share in the UK life and pensions
market. With the sale of e-business system components to Clerical Medical, part
of the HBOS Group, and of a Multi-Channel Advice ("MCA") solution to another
leading life and pensions provider during the period, all of the top ten UK life
and pensions companies now use MCA solutions components based on goal:
technology. Whilst the majority of turnover came from our existing customer
base, new customers during the year also included Winterthur Life UK and Webline
in the life and pensions market, Network Data and Kensington Mortgages, part of
Kensington Group Plc, in the mortgage market, and a leading high street bank.
Our market leading MCA solutions are widely recognised, having won the 'Best use
of IT in insurance' category at the Financial Sector Technology Awards for the
past two years, last year for Norwich Union's RIO project and this year for
Zurich's ETi project.
During the year, Milliman USA Inc, a leading North American actuarial services
business acquired the business and liabilities of Focus Solutions Inc, a
wholly-owned subsidiary of Focus Solutions Holdings Inc ("FSHI") in which Focus
had retained a 49% investment since the disposal of 51% of the issued share
capital of FSHI to management last year. As part of the acquisition agreement,
Milliman signed a new licence agreement with the Group, ensuring that Focus will
benefit from any future revenue based on the use of goal:technology through
royalty payments. Initial progress is encouraging, although this is unlikely to
result in substantial revenues in the short term.
In February 2004, we launched XFormation, the world's first commercially
available XForms Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the creation of
web solutions. Incorporating technology supplied by x.port.net Limited,
XFormation is a generic XForms based toolkit, supporting the next generation of
forms technology that is set to replace HTML forms. XFormation has global
application across all industry sectors.
During the year, we secured our first orders for MCA solutions for the UK
mortgage market, with Network Data and Kensington Mortgages. While not
significant in terms of value, these contracts are very significant for the
business, particularly the provision of an online mortgage application system to
Kensington to enable brokers and intermediaries to transact electronic new
mortgage business directly via the Internet.
Review of results
Turnover for the year ending 31st March 2004 was £5.4 million compared with £6.6
million in the previous financial year. This reduction was principally the
result of the completion of the Norwich Union Point of Sale solution, RIO. In
contrast, sales of goal:technology and associated services increased by 30% from
£2.81 million to £3.67 million and now represent 66% of turnover, compared with
43% last year. Despite the decline in sales revenues, we reduced our loss before
tax to £0.38 million compared to £3.8 million last year. In the second half of
the year, the business generated a profit of £0.28 million. This is the first
six month period in the Group's history in which we have generated a profit.
The progress made towards profitability in the year, was largely achieved by
reducing administrative expenses from £9.60 million last year to £5.98 million
this year. Cost reductions achieved in the first half of the year fed through
into a much improved performance in the second half. The monthly administrative
costs of the business have been reduced to £0.42 million in the second half of
the year, equivalent to annualised costs of £5.03 million. Substantial savings
were made at an executive level, in administrative areas and in professional
service delivery, particularly in relation to the RIO project. However, we
maintained our investment in research and development, sales and marketing and
in our partnerships team, as it is these areas that will develop and grow the
business in the future. Investment in these areas will continue at similar
levels in FY2005, while we maintain stringent control over all areas of
expenditure. Losses after tax were £0.28 million against £3.43 million last
year, after a corporation tax credit of £0.1 million against the costs of
investment in research and development for the year ending March 2003.
Cash outflow from operating activities during the year totalled £0.9 million
(FY2003: £2.4 million). During the year, a total of £0.7 million was raised from
share placings or the exercise of share options. In the second half of the
period, the Group generated £0.2 million of cash from its trading activities.
This is the first period in the Group's history when it has achieved this. Cash
and money market deposits at 31st March 2004 were £1.5 million, compared with
£1.3 million at 30th September 2003 and £1.7 million at the end of the last
financial year, and the balance sheet remains debt free. During the year, we
did, however, negotiate bank facilities totalling £350,000 with HSBC plc, should
we require them.
Loss per share for the year ending 31st March 2004 was 1.0p, compared with a
loss of 13.4p for the year ending 31st March 2003.
The Board's primary objective is to provide the resources necessary for the
business to grow and create a business of sustained profitability and cash
generation. In the long term, this represents the best opportunity for return on
investment. Accordingly, we currently have no plans to pay a dividend in the
near future.
Research and development
The investment in research and development and in product development is
substantial and totalled £0.9 million in FY2004 (FY2003: £1.0 million). This
investment is fully written off in the year in which it is incurred. The Group
benefits from the research and development tax credits and has made a provision
in the accounts for the credit due for FY2003. No provision has yet been made
for FY2004, pending agreement of the FY2003 submission.
People
The Group has achieved much since flotation on AIM in March 2000. We now face
different challenges and during the year a number of changes to the Board were
made to help take the Group forward to its next phase in its development.
Martin Clements was appointed to the Board as Finance Director on June 12th 2003
when Sue Hele stepped down as Finance Director. As Focus enters the next phase
of its development, the Group will benefit from Martin's experience in
developing high profile software companies both in the UK and internationally. I
would like to extend my thanks to Sue for her commitment and contribution to the
Group during the previous two and half years.
Bob Hull retired as a non-executive director and Company Secretary on 25th
September 2003 after nearly five years involvement with the Group, including
acting as Finance Director at the time of the AIM flotation. We remain extremely
grateful to Bob for his efforts at the time of the float and for his continued
wise counsel since that event. I would like to wish him all the best in his
future endeavours.
The improved financial performance of the Group is a testament to the reputation
of our staff for both their technical expertise and responsiveness to customer
requirements. To achieve these results in the current environment has required
both flexibility and commitment from our staff. These challenging times have
created many pressures, in spite of which our team has continued to exceed our
expectations time after time. I thank all of them for their continued commitment
to Focus and for their achievements and enthusiasm.
Outlook
Whilst the whole financial services market remains volatile, insurance companies
and others in the financial services industry are moving steadily towards
electronic trading. Over the next year, a number of significant changes in
regulation are likely to accelerate this.
However, customers are still reviewing expenditure carefully. Consequently, we
will continue to contain costs and target resources to maintain the Group's
improving financial performance in this challenging environment. The Group will
continue to move towards delivering value for shareholders by strengthening its
position as the leading provider of electronic trading solutions to the life and
pensions industry and exploiting the opportunities emerging in the mortgage
market. We will continue working to fully exploit the potential of our MCA
solutions based on goal:technology, supporting our new product, XFormation, and
developing partnerships to help us penetrate other market sectors and regions.
Alastair M Taylor
Chairman
Chief Executive's Statement
Last year was a difficult year in the UK insurance market. Against this
backdrop, Focus was also managing a major transition in its business as the
Norwich Union POS solution, RIO, was coming to the end of its development cycle
in terms of revenue generation. In this tough environment, Focus delivered a
very encouraging performance, with 30% growth in sales of goal:technology and
associated services, the successful launch of XFormation and the signing of the
first partnership deal with Milliman. Underpinning our plans for the Group has
been the recognition that we must make the business sustainable and scalable.
In terms of sustainability, it is our objective to extend the customer base by
entering additional market sectors. A key medium term objective is for our
recurring revenues to substantially cover our fixed cost base. While we remain
someway from achieving this goal, substantial progress was made in the year. In
the short term, our solutions business is close to sustainability based on our
established strategy for the design, delivery and implementation of world class
e-trading solutions based around our MCA components for the financial services
markets, built using goal:technology, our XML toolkit.
In terms of scalability we see the technology side of the business offering much
greater short term opportunities. The exploitation of goal:technology in other
markets through partners has formed a major plank of our strategy for a number
of years. We have now secured our first partnership arrangement with Milliman
and have an ongoing business relationship with Fidelity Information Services. We
have also recently joined the BEA Partner programme. The development and launch
of XFormation, derived from the goal:technology family of software, is moving
the business into other non-financial services related markets.
MCA solutions for the life and pensions market
The past few years have been very difficult for the UK life and pensions
industry, with falling stock markets, increasing regulation and consolidation in
the industry. The move towards electronic trading, although slow to take off
initially, is now gathering pace. A recent analysis of the percentage of
transactions now being delivered electronically shows that 17% were automated in
2003, compared to 4% over 2002. (Source: Focus Quotient 2003). With all of the
top 10 UK life and pensions companies using goal:technology, Focus is now a
leading supplier of customer management solutions to this market, providing one
of the key components required to make straight through processing of
applications for pensions and insurance policies a reality.
Software that incorporates goal:technology has now been distributed to
approximately 40,000 users within the UK life insurers and the IFA community.
This represents a significant foothold in our core market and provides an
important reference for other markets inside and outside the financial services
sector.
During the past year, we have secured important new business with Winterthur
Life UK, Webline, Clerical Medical and one other leading life and pensions
provider. Marlborough Stirling's market leading IFA Portal business, The
Exchange, has signed an agreement to use goal:technology in its Exweb Gold
service. An established customer, Zurich, has radically transformed its direct
sales force POS using MCA based on goal:technology, over 98% of its transactions
from this channel are now received electronically. It has also signed a contract
to use MCA for new business based on goal:technology in its extranet, allowing
the IFA channel to place transactions online.
Entry into the mortgage market
During the last twelve months, MCA for mortgages was selected by Kensington
Mortgages to build a new online mortgage application system and by Network Data,
a leading mortgage sourcing company, to support the provision of mortgage
products. Focus has previously worked with two major life insurers to develop
solutions to capture and deliver mortgages and associated general insurance
transactions electronically. With the proliferation of mortgage products and the
introduction of legislation in October 2004 to regulate the provision of
mortgage advice, mortgage lenders are looking for solutions to achieve the new
compliance requirements.
goal:technology
goal:technology, Focus' XML based toolkit is designed to enable the rapid
development of components to automate the sales process. It comprises a suite of
products that enable the simple design, development and deployment of complex
data capture processes that can be implemented as a standalone technology or
integrated within existing products or solutions to significantly enhance data
capture capability. An XML data capture built using goal:technology can be
reused in multiple business channels and environments.
As a result, solutions built using goal:technology are built to change and are
to a large extent "future proofed". This compares to the traditional approach to
building software, which has resulted in many legacy systems with long lead
times for development, and software that is difficult and costly to change and
maintain. With speed and flexibility becoming key differentiators of company
performance, these old models no longer make commercial sense.
Our customers are looking for solutions that enable them to gain competitive
differentiation in their market and that are flexible enough to allow them to
respond to continuing change in market conditions. They are looking for fast
development and implementation timescales, solutions that are built in 90 days,
are easy to change and can deliver a return on investment within the current
budget year. goal:technology is unique in meeting these requirements and
underpinning the delivery of solutions to customers facing tough trading
environments.
goal:technology is generic, and can be used in a wide range of industries where
the simple creation of sophisticated front end applications is required. Our
partnership programme has been set up to extend the reach of goal:technology
into market sectors outside the life and pensions market, targeting software
companies and systems integrators, where goal:technology can add value to their
solutions and cut the costs of development and maintenance. Our US partner,
Milliman, is making good progress with goal:technology and is now ready to
deploy solutions for three large US general insurance companies.
As standards continue to evolve, we have made an early move into the XForms
market, which we see as an important development. XFormation has been developed
as the first working XForms builder/ processor package and made available to the
wider development community over the Internet.
The XForms standard defines a dialect for the next generation of forms
technology that is set to replace HTML forms. The new XForms standard has been
developed by the W3C, the worldwide community responsible for the standards that
support the World Wide Web. The XForms specification overcomes current
limitations of HTML and reduces the need for extensive script when developing
interactive web pages. The XForms standard is device independent and will allow
complex functionality to be deployed across the web and on other deployment
devices such as mobile phones or pocket PCs. This in itself represents a major
market opportunity for other sectors to gain the advantages currently enjoyed by
our UK life and pensions customers. Focus will continue investing to ensure that
our goal:technology XML toolkit exploits the recent advances in data capture led
by the W3C Internet standards authority.
Strategy
It is our strategy to create a sustainable and scalable business. The provision
of customer management solutions to the UK life and pensions market using goal:
technology can generate sustainable profits in the foreseeable future, coupled
with taking goal:technology into other associated markets (such as general
insurance and mortgages). To achieve further growth, the Board believes there is
significant opportunity in exploiting goal:technology more widely through
developing partnership agreements with organisations operating in different
geographical and vertical markets.
John Streets
Chief Executive
Consolidated Profit and Loss Account
31 March 2004
Year ended Year ended
31 March 2004 31 March 2003
Continuing Continuing Discontinued Total
Operations Operations Operations
£'000 £'000 £'000 £'000
Turnover 5,388 6,583 - 6,583
Operating loss
before re-
organisation
costs and
amortisation
of goodwill (470) (1,358) (1,119) (2,477)
Re-organisation
costs (119) (64) (129) (193)
Amortisation
of goodwill - - (343) (343)
________ ________ ________ ______
Operating loss (589) (1,422) (1,591) (3,013)
Loss on
disposal of US
operations 167 - (897) (897)
________ ________ ________ ______
Loss on
ordinary
activities
before
interest (422) (1,422) (2,488) (3,910)
Net interest
receivable 40 89 (12) 77
________ ________ ________ ______
Loss on
ordinary
activities
before
taxation (382) (1,333) (2,500) (3,833)
Taxation 100 401 - 401
________ ________ ________ ______
Loss on
ordinary
activities
after taxation
and retained
loss for the
year (282) (932) (2,500) (3,432)
======= ======= ======= ======
Loss per
ordinary share (1.0p) (13.4p)
No separate statement of total recognised gains and losses has been presented as
all such gains and losses have been dealt with in the profit and loss account.
Group Balance Sheet
31 March 2004
2004 2003
£'000 £'000
Fixed assets
Tangible assets 171 224
________ ________
Current assets
Debtors 1,845 1,704
Investments - money market deposits 250 656
Cash at bank and in hand 1,234 1,039
________ ________
3,329 3,399
________ ________
Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year 1,331 1,848
________ ________
Net current assets 1,998 1,551
________ ________
Total assets less current liabilities 2,169 1,775
________ ________
Net assets 2,169 1,775
________ ________
Capital and reserves
Called up share capital 2,851 2,567
Share premium 9,819 9,427
Merger reserve 220 220
Profit and loss account (10,721) (10,439)
________ ________
Shareholders' funds - equity interests 2,169 1,775
________ ________
Consolidated Cash Flow Statement
for the year ended 31 March 2004
Year ended Year ended
31 March 31 March
2004 2003
£'000 £'000
Net cash outflow from operating activities (927) ( 2,375)
Returns on investments and servicing of finance 40 73
Taxation 56 345
Capital expenditure and financial investment (56) (159)
Acquisitions and disposals - (802)
________ ________
Cash outflow before management of liquid
resources and financing (887) (2,918)
Management of liquid resources 406 3,174
Financing 676 3
________ ________
Increase in cash in the year 195 259
________ ________
Reconciliation of net cashflow to movement in net funds
Year ended Year ended
31 March 31 March
2004 2003
£'000 £'000
Increase in cash in the period 195 259
Change in net funds resulting from financing - 3
Cash inflow from decrease in liquid resources (406) (3,174)
________ ________
Movement in net funds in the year (211) (2,912)
Net funds at start of year 1,695 4,607
________ ________
Net funds at end of year 1,484 1,695
________ ________
Notes
for the year ended 31 March 2004
1. The financial information set out above does not constitute statutory
accounts for the years ended 31 March 2004 and 2003, but is derived from those
accounts. Statutory accounts for the year ended 31 March 2003 have been
delivered to the Registrar of Companies and those for the year ended 31 March
2004 will be delivered following the Company's annual general meeting. The
auditors have reported on those accounts; their reports were unqualified and did
not contain statements under s237(2) or (3) Companies Act 1985.
2. Turnover
The geographical analysis of turnover by destination is:
2004 2003
£000 £000
United Kingdom 5,367 6,583
North America 21 -
______ ______
5,388 6,583
______ ______
3. Earnings/(loss) per share
The basic earnings/(loss) per share is based on attributable loss for
the year of £282,000 (2003 loss - £3,432,000) and on 27,503,678 ordinary shares
(2003 - 25,627,844) being the weighted average number of ordinary shares in
issue during the year.
The diluted loss per share in 2004 and 2003 is the same as the basic loss per
share.
4. Report and Accounts
Copies of the Report and Accounts will be circulated to shareholders shortly and
may be obtained after the posting date from the Company Secretary, Focus
Solutions Group Plc, Cranford House, Kenilworth Road, Leamington Spa, CV32 6RQ.
5. The AGM will be held at 4.30 pm on 22 July 2004 at the registered office
of the Company (Cranford House, Kenilworth Road, Leamington Spa, CV32 6RQ).
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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