GetBusy recurring revenue rises, first-half losses widen

Document and task management software company GetBusy reported a 12% improvement in group recurring revenue at constant currency in its first half on Wednesday, £6.94m, with growth coming in at 9% in reported currency.

The AIM-traded firm said group annualised recurring revenue was 13% in constant currency to £14m for the six months ended 30 June, with recurring revenue now comprising 93% of total revenues, up from 91% in the first half of 2020.

Recurring revenue from its ‘SmartVault’ product was up 26% at constant currency, driven by “strong” new business, while ‘Virtual Cabinet’ was ahead 3%.

GetBusy said the group gross margin was slightly lower at 91.6%, compared to 93.1% a year earlier, due to SmartVault's increasing proportion of group revenue.

An additional £0.5m scale-up investment in SmartVault delivered 28% total revenue growth at constant currency, the board reported.

The company recorded an adjusted loss before tax of £0.5m, widening slightly from £0.3m a year prior, which reflected the greater investment in scaling SmartVault, and accrual for higher performance-driven incentive costs.

Net cash was described by the company as “strong” at £2.0m, with its £2.0m loan facility remaining undrawn.

“GetBusy is the leader in specialist document management software for accountants,” said chief executive officer Daniel Rabie.

“The combined strength of Virtual Cabinet - a widely-respected, capable and established hybrid solution with deep integrations into multiple leading tax and practice management providers - and SmartVault - our rapidly growing and highly scalable pure software-as-a-service (SaaS) product - positions us uniquely to capture a significant proportion of the accounting market.

“Our increasing investments and our document management teams' complete focus is on realising that growth potential over the next three to five years.”

Rabie said the company was also “excited” to have signed its first NetSuite channel partner for GetBusy, giving it an opportunity to expand into a new product segment, opening “substantial” new addressable markets.

“This important milestone provides validation around the problem we're solving and the specific market opportunity.

“We remain confident that we are in the right markets, with the right people and products to accelerate our growth in high quality recurring subscription revenues over the medium to long term.

“We continue to invest to support that growth and we look forward to the future with increasing confidence.”

At 1359 BST, shares in GetBusy were down 4.14% at 81p.