3rd Aug 2015 06:52
LONDON (Alliance News) - Fidessa Group PLC on Monday said the additional investment it is making in new opportunities is having a "small impact" on its operating margin, and said there may be greater pressure arising going into 2016 from potential consolidation activity amongst its customers.
The FTSE 250 trading, investment and information company said it made a GBP19.4 million pretax profit in the first half of 2015, down slightly from the GBP19.7 million reported for the first six months of 2014. Revenue was up by 7% to GBP145.9 million, and expenses before amortisation of acquired intangible assets increased by 8% to GBP126.5 million. Amortisation of acquired intangibles was flat at GBP365,000.
Fidessa said its interim dividend payment to shareholders will remain at 13.1 pence per share.
"During the first half of 2015 we have seen customer markets start to enter a new phase of the recovery as regulatory and structural changes begin to have an impact. This changing landscape is creating a large number of new opportunities as well as some additional challenges, resulting in a high level of new business activity alongside an increased investment pipeline," Chief Executive Chris Aspinwall said in a statement.
"As we move into the second half, we expect the themes we have seen in the first half to strengthen, with more pressure around regulatory change and more opportunities opening up, and this is reflected in the strength of our current pipeline. We also expect that as competition within our customer base increases we may see some further closures and consolidations, and whilst we anticipate similar levels of growth for the year as a whole, this may result in a higher level of headwind into 2016," Aspinwall said.
Fidessa thinks that "significant opportunity" is returning to the markets, and expects a return to growth rates similar to those seen in the past as they stabilise.
"We expect that we will make further strong progress with our multi-asset initiative and we will continue to look at the possibility of extending our asset class coverage further. We remain excited by the potential of our service-based offerings across all asset classes and believe that there are increasingly few vendors capable of meeting our customers' business requirements whilst also having the scale and infrastructure necessary to handle the latest compliance demands being made by the regulators," Aspinwall said.
By Samuel Agini; [email protected]; @samuelagini
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