Eckoh ends year on a high

The AIM-traded company said it had continued to make “good progress” in the US, with strong momentum in its Secure Payments business.

It said the US secure payments order book continued to build, with new contract wins totalling $9.3m in the 12 month period - up from $8.3m the year before.

“US Secure Payments revenues more than doubled during the period,” the board said.

“As previously announced, during the year we won a four-year contract to provide our Secure Payments solution - CallGuard - to a US Fortune 250 retailer and secured a partnership with a US global payments solutions company.”

In the UK, in what the board called “more challenging” market conditions, Eckoh started to see the benefits of its restructured UK sales function and renewed focus on larger, more strategic accounts.

As it had previously announced, the company secured several “sizeable” contract wins across the payments, insurance, healthcare and mobile telecoms sectors since its half-year results in November.

As a result, it said it had won “significantly more” contracts in the UK in the second half of the financial year than in the first - revenues from which would start to feed in to the current year.

Eckoh said its balance sheet remained “robust” with net cash of £3.6m at the period end, up from £0.2m a year earlier.

“The group has a strong pipeline and is seeing an increasing number of larger-scale opportunities at the enterprise level,” the board explained.

“We expect the introduction of European GDPR from 25 May 2018 to present further opportunities for Eckoh, as US organisations as well as those in the UK seek to comply with EU consumer data regulations.”

The group said it would report its audited results for the year ended 31 March on 13 June.