21st Aug 2014 13:24
LONDON (Alliance News) - Cloudbuy PLC Thursday reiterated confidence that its medium-term revenue and margin targets are "eminently achievable" - in fact a year earlier than previously thought - even as it posted a widened pretax loss on increased costs in the half-year to end June.
The company posted a pretax loss of GBP1.6 million in the recent half, widened from GBP301,000 a year before, as revenue rose to GBP1.5 million from GBP1.4 million, as administrative expenses and share-based payments rose. This resulted from adding to headcount during the year, as part of the company's focus on "globalising" its business, it said.
Whilst there was a step-change in administrative costs in this period, Executive Chairman Robert Duncan told Alliance News that there wouldn't be the same level of growth in administrative expenses going forward, although it still will make investments in local teams.
The company also improved its operating profit margin to 87% from 83%.
Cloudbuy has had a successful market entry into Australia and New Zealand, it said, as it went live with two projects. It said the projects were significant, because they were on its new revenue model, whereby it collects a small percentage of the value of transactions made through its e-commerce platform.
Following the period end the company won a contract in Australia worth an initial AUD900,000 per year, which it said could potentially rise to AUD7.2 million per year.
CloudBuy said it was moving forward with its support of Asian languages and Asian cross-border taxation requirements, as it pursues opportunities in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and North America.
It also secured several contracts in Health and Social Care in the UK and was approved as a supplier for the UK government's Local Authority Software Applications and G-Cloud 5 framework. The four-year framework replaces the current Local Government Software Application Solutions framework, which came to an end in July 2014.
"With this level of growth, profitability and potential, our medium-term target of GBP50m turnover and 90% margin looks eminently achievable," Duncan said in a statement.
Duncan told Alliance News the target was a lot more achievable then it had been before; and whilst last year Cloudbuy was targeting three to five years to do that, it is now targeting two to four years.
Duncan cited the company's pipeline of opportunities, and two potential other ways of hitting its target; the first being an opportunity with the UK National Health Service, and another opportunity in care. However, these two opportunities are out of Cloudbuy's hands.
"Two of them I don't have control over, the third is global expansion, which we have got, we are succeeding with, and it's producing really good results," Duncan said. "With that one we can see us hitting that target and going way beyond it."
As to whether or not the company will consider acquisitions, Duncan said, "we could acquire things as part of expansion, that's always a possibility, it's just finding the balance, because we've increased the size of our team and invested heavily, and are growing very rapidly at the moment."
Shares in Cloudbuy were trading up 3.6% at 40.40 pence Thursday afternoon.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; [email protected]; @HanaSSAllNews
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