Global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions Echoh PLC (LON: ECK) posted boosts to its contracted business across its US and UK businesses, which allowed it to declare that it was operating in line with expectations.
The Company reported a year-on-year increase of 8% for the first half in its total contracted business in the UK, up to £7.9 million. Eckoh said that their UK business was being driven increasingly by their recently launched Eckoh Experience Portal (“EXP”) which it said,”enables organisations to purchase our Customer Engagement and Secure Payment solutions in a modular fashion”.
More impressive, perhaps, was the 15% jump in its total contracted business in its US operations, which rose to $14.4 million.
The Company added that it had secured a contract extension worth a minimum of $3.8 million, for its agent desktop tool Coral, with a Fortune 100 telecom company. It concluded by saying that management remained confident of further progress in the second half, and that its net cash balance had bounced from £3.4 million to £10.9 million on-year.
Eckoh comments
The Company’s statement read,
“The Board is pleased to announce that trading for the six-month period was in line with expectations. It has been a very strong first half to the year with excellent levels of contracted business and double-digit revenue growth in both the UK and US.”
“The US business continues to perform strongly, and total business contracted was $14.4m (H1 2019: $12.5m), an increase of 15% year on year, which was an impressive result given that the prior half year comparator included our largest ever contract valued at $7.4m.”
“We continue to have excellent momentum in our US Secure Payments business, with ongoing success in the retail and healthcare sectors and we have recently won our first client in the gaming sector. The pipeline for the second half of the year is encouraging, reflecting the long-term structural drivers for our Secure Payments products: tightening regulation, and the growing risk of data breaches and fraud within challenging parts of our clients’ businesses.”
Investor notes
The Company’s shares have rallied 4.18% or 2.02p to 50.27p per share 29/10/19 14:44 GMT. Analysts from Canaccord Genuity reiterated their ‘Buy’ stance on Eckoh stance, the Company’s p/e ratio is soaring at 130.41 and their dividend yield stands at 1.21%.
Elsewhere in the tech sector, there were updates from; dotDigital Group plc (LON: DOTD), ProPhotonix Ltd (LON: PPIX), Universe Group plc (LON: UNG), Microsaic Systems PLC (LON: MSYS), Petards Group plc (LON: PEG), SCISYS Group PLC (LON: SSY) and Pebble Beach Systems Group PLC (LON: PEB).
