Alterian loses £976,00 at half time
Article Date: Nov 15 2000Software specialist Alterian lost £976,000 in the six months to September, but the stockmarket took it well, writes Leslie Copeland.
Cash rich Alterian's interim losses were lower than many analysts had feared. In the six months to September, the company kept its deficit to £976.000 on sales of £606,000.
Alterian's basic product is its 'Analysis Database' platform, which allows the likes of retailers, website operators and insurers to analyse millions of records cost-effectively on a PC-based platform. It charges 'business partners' an annual fee for access to the technology and also picks up an annual fee each time its business partner sells the product on to a client.
Part of the reason for the stronger than expected first half performance is an increase in business partners from 5 to 16, including Dimension Data and Experian. Trinity Mirror, Premier Farnell and National Power are among end users of the technology.
Staff numbers have grown from 15 to 51 since May. According to chief executive David Eldridge, almost half of Alterian's staff is now employed in the marketing and sales division. Says Eldridge 'we are very much running according to plan. We have managed to attract some high calibre people and we will be accelerating our investment in both products and people in the second half'. Part of that investment will include the opening of an office in Chicago, within the next few weeks.
The investment programme is expected to result in full year losses of around £6 million. Although profitability is not expected for a few years yet, Alterian is unlikely to be in need of a cash injection for some time yet - it has almost £35 million in the bank following its flotation on techMARK back in July.
The shares moved up 0.5p to 263.5p on the news, valuing the group at over £103 million.
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