Sopheon talking up accolades at AGM

As investors in international software and services provider Sopheon gathered on Thursday for the company’s annual general meeting, its board released an update to the market on its current trading and position.

The AIM-traded firm’s board said it experienced “another year” of “excellent” financial and operational progress, as it continued to advance its strategy of being “the world's leading” solution provider of enterprise-class innovation management software solutions.

“A year ago we were pleased to report solid strategic and financial progress, and we are delighted to say the same applies today, one year later,” the statement read.

“Last year we grew revenues to $23.2m from $20.9m in 2015 and $18.3m in 2014, and we delivered another substantial increase in profitability, with EBITDA rising to $5.2m before exchange gains from $4.1m the year before, which was itself more than triple the 2014 performance.”

Profit before tax rose to $3.0m from $1.2m in 2015, the board confirmed.

In 2016 it also initiated partial recognition of its substantial deferred tax asset, which resulted in a profit after tax of $4.3m.

Net assets nearly doubled to $10.4m from $5.5m in 2015.

“The revenue growth was underpinned by a rise to 49 license transactions from 42 the year before, of which 17 were new customers, up from 14 in 2015.

“We continued to invest in and show traction with the two elements of our go-to-market strategy - both the global end-to-end enterprise solution, and the ‘out-of-the-box’ Accolade Express solution for quicker time to value.

“Our market strength in the consumer products industry was again recognized, with Sopheon being voted a ‘top ten software vendor’ for the seventh consecutive year by the CGT magazine readership.”

In addition to that progress, the board said it also saw “strong traction” in the aerospace and defense and chemicals sectors.

Sopheon's commercial success was being achieved in parallel with strategic and operational initiatives aimed at underpinning the company’s continued growth for the next three to five years, the board claimed.

“We maintained our rapid pace of product development releases, with another three in 2016, further advancing our platform for enterprise utilization and flexibility, followed by version 11.1 which we released in February this year.

“This continued investment supports our growth strategy in two areas.

“One is to capitalise on existing client demand to expand their Accolade investment beyond product innovation to support enterprise initiative management tracking and decision making.”

Sopheon said that market opportunity had been validated by Gartner's 2016 Market Guide for Strategy Execution Software, and their recognition of Sopheon in the emerging space.

“We are also delighted to announce Sopheon's inclusion in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Project Portfolio Management, just last week.

“Sopheon is the only vendor referenced in both the Market Guide for Strategy Execution Software and the Magic Quadrant for Project Portfolio Management.”

The board said that, in its view, that provided “strong” validation of its “unique” position and strength in the enterprise portfolio management, enterprise initiative management, and product development markets.

“The second growth area we continue to invest in is our vertical industry focus on chemical, consumer goods, food and beverage, aerospace and defense, and high-tech.

“In addition, we are researching the insurance, service and automobile industries as we have recently signed customers in these areas.”

Such customers helped Sopheon to understand the value proposition Accolade could bring to new vertical markets, and to determine if those represented further new growth opportunities for the company.

“Following several years of clarifying our debt, equity and listing structure, our corporate activity has been relatively quiet in the past year, other than extension of the maturity of our debt facilities to January 2019.”