Highlights for the year ended 31st December 2012:
Multi-asset revenue more than doubled as derivatives programme bears fruit.
Further growth in recurring revenue to 84% of total revenues.
Good revenue growth from enterprise customers.
Strong growth delivered by regional expansion, particularly in Asia and Latin America.
Good cash generation, with £72.1 million cash balance after dividend payments of £30.2 million.
Total dividends of 82p proposed for year.
Commenting on these results, Chris Aspinwall, Chief Executive, said:
"For the financial markets, conditions in 2012 were more difficult than expected with the global value of equity trading falling by around 20% on top of the already depressed levels seen in 2011. This has meant further stress for our customers resulting in continued attrition and price pressure, therefore making it challenging for us to deliver the growth levels we have been used to. Despite these pressures we have continued our investment programme, expanding our capability across assets, services and regions and winning significant new deals. This, combined with the very strong growth that we have achieved for our new derivatives offering, has enabled us to continue to deliver growth in recurring revenue. However, the more discretionary consultancy revenue has suffered as customers seek to reduce their costs and this reduction has offset the growth in recurring revenue."
Commenting on current trading, Chris Aspinwall continued:
"In recent months there has been a marked and positive change of sentiment in the market, with the weekly flow of funds into the equity markets reaching one of the highest levels ever recorded. Whilst it is clearly too early to know whether this represents a turning point, it reinforces our view that a floor will eventually be reached in the decline of equity markets which will allow our core end markets to gradually return to a more stable state. This would enable the growth we are generating through sales of our derivatives platforms, our service based platforms and our regional expansion to flow through into overall revenue growth rather than being masked by the decline in traditional equities. Although we expect that we may see this process start during 2013, we do not believe that it will happen quickly enough to have a material benefit to 2013 revenue. This combined with our continued investment programme means that we expect performance in 2013 to be similar to that seen in 2012.
Looking further ahead, we believe that we will see stability and opportunity returning to the markets and that reduced headwinds, coupled with further openings as our multi-asset initiative gains momentum, will enable us to return to growth levels closer to those we have seen in the past. We remain excited by the potential of our service based offerings across all asset classes and believe that we will continue to play an important role as the markets focus on efficiency, transparency, compliance and performance. We maintain our commitment to the financial industry and to developing the solutions it needs over the coming years throughout the regions."
