SDL cuts 2013 dividend

SDL plc preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2013. 

Summary:

·      Language services:  recovery to 1.7% revenue growth in the second half accompanied by return to normal PBTA margin.

·      Content & Analytic Technologies and Language Technologies: in combination broadly flat in terms of revenues but losses incurred due to previously announced significant investment made in R&D and sales & marketing. 

·      New customer wins in the period include: Acer, Adidas, Haier, Skype, Turkish Airlines and VMware

·      Significant restructuring of the business to properly align with market opportunity

·      Implemented large scale global systems to manage the business more effectively

·      Several proven industry leaders hired to fortify the senior executive team

·      Post period end, we launched SDL Customer Experience Cloud™, a unified suite of offerings to help marketers create and deliver seamless global customer experiences across all channels, devices and languages

·      No final dividend due to the restructuring and investment costs in 2013

Outlook

The foundations and infrastructure are in place. Throughout 2013, the hard decisions and investments have been made.  However, there will be a lag before the restructuring and investments take full effect. As we move through 2014, we expect the business to gain bookings, revenue and profit momentum as the new structure and initiatives take effect. SDL has a solid foundation of best of breed integrated technology and, we have put in place an organisational structure to deliver it. This gives us great deal of confidence we will return to the levels of profitability and exceed the levels of technology growth we had in the past.

Mark Lancaster, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"In 2013 we undertook some hard but essential changes that will provide the impetus for our future success. SDL's structure is now more aligned to the market opportunity and I believe that we now have the foundations in place to capture the opportunities in customer experience management.

Early signs show that the decision to invest is strengthening our business, and we enter a new financial year with an executive leadership team with the right levels of experience and expertise and a go-to-market approach built on the foundations of enhanced global systems.

We expect the market to continue to evolve rapidly over the next three years, as consumers demand better customer engagement through hand held devices and general online access to relevant information. As we move through 2014, we expect the business to gain bookings momentum in the latter half of the year as the new structure and initiatives take effect."