Eckoh finishes year in line with expectations

Secure payment product and consumer contact solutions provider Eckoh updated the market on its trading for the year to 31 March on Monday, confirming it was “comfortably” in line with market expectations, with revenue and margin growing by over 20% for the fourth year in succession.

The AIM-traded company said it continued to make “good progress” in the UK, and the group's operations in the United States had produced a record year in terms of revenues and order book.

As a result, US-derived revenues would again represent a growing proportion of total group revenues.

“The group continues to benefit from increasing revenue and earnings visibility driven by the increasing proportion of US sales attributable to longer term, software-as-a-service style commercial relationships with customers,” the board said in a statement.

“As announced on the 22 March, the company has secured its largest ever payment contract worth $3.7m, and during the year US payment contracts valued at $8.3m were won, with over 90% of this contract value derived from agreements using the preferred SaaS-style pricing model.”

Eckoh said its balance sheet remained “robust” with net cash ahead of market expectations at the period end.

The group had a strong pipeline and was responding to an increasing number of tenders.

It would report its results for the year ended 31 March on Monday 12 June.

At the same time, Eckoh also announced that Chris Batterham - who had served as non-executive chairman since July 2009 - would be stepping down from his position and leaving the board at the forthcoming annual general meeting.

“[By then] the group expects to have Chris's successor in place,” the board said.

“The search for his replacement is already well-advanced.”