Idox, the software supplier, has moved into the black with a £1.1m pre-tax profit following last year's £500,000 loss, and reported a strong sales outlook.
Its shares, down at 5p a year ago, edged ahead again 0.25p to a year high of 12.25p.
Turnover was up 58% to £20.6m and cash balances up 85% to £8.9m in the year to October 31, in which it acquired CAPS Solution for £21.1m and changed its chief executive for the second time in 18 months.
Richard Kellett-Clarke who stepped up from finance director in October when he also bought one million shares, replaced Steve Ainsworth who in 2006 had replaced Andrew Fraser.
Chairman Martin Brooks said: "The group has been revitalised in the last year in refocusing the business on our core software market which has generated a strong improvement in our underlying trading performance and strengthening of our balance sheet."
He said this had been reinforced by the pivotal acquisition of CAPS, which had already been integrated ahead of schedule, and with greater than anticipated recurring cost savings. "The recent combined sales pipeline has grown healthily and the new business outlook is encouraging."
The group now has over 300 local authority customers and has recently secured "large complex contracts" as key sub-contractor under the lead supplier to the Scottish Government and directly to Cambridge City Council and Bromsgrove Council.
"The local authority software and services supplier market is already in the process of consolidating, and we are actively looking for targets that would bring us additional scale, capabilities and synergies," Brooks said. "We are also closely monitoring certain opportunities internationally."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article