Intercede pleased with progress in first half

Digital identity, credential management and secure mobility company Intercede updated the market on its trading for the six months to 30 September on Thursday, reporting that first half revenues increased by around 30% compared to the previous period, to more than £3.6m.

The AIM-traded company said that was primarily due to new customer wins, with the most notable including MyID license sales to the largest US military shipbuilding company, a major US aerospace and defence contractor and one of the world's largest diversified natural resource companies.

As at 30 September, cash balances totalled £4.8m compared to £1.4m as at 30 September 2016.

Intercede raised £4.6m net from the issue of convertible loan notes (CLN) and new equity in January, with a further £0.5m from the same CLN instruments in August.

During the period, Intercede said it continued to develop the applications for its “market-leading” identity software.

That included the launch of the MyID service for employees, which it described as a “cloud-based service” that allows enterprises of all sizes to eliminate the use of user passwords through the issuance of “strong identity credentials” to staff members.

The service uses government-grade cyber security and avoided customers having to incur the costs and complexity of on-site software installation and maintenance.

Several significant appointments were made to strengthen the group's sales and marketing during the half.

Chuck Pol, former chairperson of Vodafone Americas; and Helen Adams, former vice president of sales for Europe & Asia Pacific at ARM Holdings; were both appointed in June with further recruitment subsequently taking place to expand and refresh the sales team, the board explained.

As a commitment to achieving consequential high sales growth, Adams had this week agreed to a share option plan incorporating performance targets based upon the achievement of 50% growth on FY2017 revenues in FY2018, a doubling of FY2017 revenues in FY2019 and a tripling of FY17 revenues in FY2020.

“The last six months have been a positive period for Intercede,” said chairman and CEO Richard Parris.

“Progress has been made in our existing core market within government agencies and large enterprises.

“Safe in the knowledge that we have created a significant engine for growth, we are shortly to relaunch our MyID product proposition as a seamless suite of software and cloud-based services to address newly emerging regulated markets in financial services, open banking and general data protection.”

In doing so, Parris said Intercede could refocus and simplify messaging around real-life use cases and the problems the company solved for each of its target verticals.

“This gives the board confidence that we will experience a strong second half to the financial year, notwithstanding likely budget difficulties in our traditionally large US government customer base.”