Royalblue Group, a UK-based provider of trading systems and telephony products, is reporting annual revenue growth of 45%, marked by strong progress in financial systems and in international implementations of the Fidessa equity dealing platform.
Pre-tax profit across the group rose by six per cent to £6.3 million for the year-end December 2000 against revenues of £57.4 million, up from £39.7 million for 1999. Most of the gains were reported in the financial division which markets the Fidessa equity trading platform.
Group chief executive, John Hamer, comments: "Our business in the financial sector is performing very strongly, with growth of 75% in orders, 69% in revenues and 64% in profits, and a significant increase in recurring revenues."
Revenues of £37m in royalblue financial now represent over 65% of turnover, notes Hamer, almost equivalent to the whole of the group's turnover in 1999. Furthermore, royalblue financial's profits in 2000 of £7m before costs of £0.9m approach the entirety of the group's profits in 1999.
Hamer points to a number of milestone deals in 2000, which reflect the development of the business internationally. These included the first orders from local firms in mainland Europe, the group's largest ever order with ABN Amro for a global system, and both enterprise and FidessaNet deals to support OTC and listed trading in the US. This has been coupled with a transition to a new enterprise rental sales model, which Hamer is expecting to significantly improve the group's recurring revenue profile.
In addition to the ongoing business Hamer also points to an increased emphasis on globalisation with a number of royalblue's customers looking to install the software in multiple locations, routing order flow and executions seamlessly between them. Hamer believes Fidessa is the only business process automation software for equities which can support the US, European, and Asian markets.
Royalblue technologies, which sells call centre and heldesk software notched up a 14 per cent increase in revenues but reduced profits over 1999. The division was helped by a strong showing in December as it recovered from earlier organisational and infrastructural problems, but Hamer remains cautious: "We are naturally cautious about the rate of expansion here until we are confident that we have fully restored the previous solid progress of this business stream."