EMIS Group finishes year 'marginally ahead' of expectations

The AIM-traded firm said that in its EMIS Health division, it remained a “key partner” to the NHS and maintained its “leading” market shares, with increased Covid-19 related sales of lower-margin hardware adding to its steady underlying growth.

In EMIS Enterprise, trading improved gradually over the second half as expected, including in the analytics business, with the controlled release of ‘EMIS-X Analytics’ in the final quarter of the year.

The group said it had continued to support the NHS in its fight against Covid-19 in a variety of areas, including the deployment of its ‘Pinnacle’ solution to support the government's vaccination programme.

EMIS said it was working with the NHS to scale up the software beyond the previous system capacity to meet the “unprecedented demands” of the rapidly-expanding vaccination programme, while maintaining high performance standards.

Having successfully transitioned its teams to homeworking in March, the company said it had adopted a policy of being primarily a home working organisation, which had continued to serve its customers and staff during successive lockdown periods.

Therefore, while the continued restrictions had increased uncertainty, the board said it did not anticipate a significant impact on its ability to trade normally through the latest national lockdown.

As it had previously indicated, the group continued to invest in the development of its “next generation” technology throughout the year.

EMIS Group said it had a strong balance sheet, with net cash of £53m as at 31 December , up from £31.1m year-on-year.

That included £7.3m of deferred VAT payments, which would be paid in the next quarter.

“In these extraordinary times I am proud that EMIS has risen to the challenge of supporting our national heroes in the NHS, in community pharmacy and across the healthcare sector,” said chief executive officer Andy Thorburn.

“Our mission-critical digital, analytics, clinical, dispensing and partner systems have been deployed to enable and support our NHS customers' impressive response to this pandemic.”

Thorburn said the improved trading in the second half reflected the strength of the business model and staff.

“The board remains confident in the outlook for the business.”

EMIS said it would announce its final results for the year ended 31 December on 18 March.

At 0918 GMT, shares in EMIS Group were up 1.32% at 1,124.7p.