Final Results

Focus Solutions Group PLC 07 June 2004 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 08 June 2004 Focus Solutions Group plc Preliminary Results Focus Solutions Group plc ("The Group" "Focus"), the leading provider of customer management solutions for the financial services industry, today announces its preliminary results for the year ended 31 March 2004. Key Highlights • Turnover down 18% to £5.4 million (2003: £6.6 million) • goal:technology licence and related services revenue up 30% to £3.7 million (2003: £2.8 million) • Loss before tax reduced by 90% to £0.4 million (2003: £3.8 million) • First ever operating profit generated in second half of £0.1 million (Second half 2003: £0.7 million operating loss) • Cash and money market deposits of £1.5 million (2003: £1.7 million); debt free • Loss per share reduced to 1.0 pence (2003: 13.4 pence loss) • Entry into UK mortgage market with contracts signed with Kensington Mortgages Limited ("Kensington Mortgages") and Network Data Limited ("Network Data") • Major contract wins during the year include: • Winterthur Life UK • The Exchange (Marlborough Stirling) • Major UK Bank Commenting on the results and prospects, John Streets, Chief Executive, said: "The Group has continued to improve its financial performance during the year, and has consolidated its leading position in the life and pensions market, with all of the top ten insurers now using our software to transact business electronically. We have also entered the mortgage and bancassurance markets winning our first contracts in these important sectors. Investment in the underlying technology has ensured that we retain our reputation as an innovator in the use of XML. During the year, we launched XFormation to support the next generation of web solutions, replacing HTML based forms. Although we expect market conditions to remain challenging, we aim to capitalise on our strong presence in the life and pensions market and build on our initial wins in the mortgage and bancassurance sectors. Supporting our new product, XFormation, and developing our partnerships will help us penetrate other market sectors and geographies. Coupled with continued emphasis on containing costs, we expect to further improve financial performance based on sustainable and scalable revenue streams." For further information please contact: Focus: John Streets, Chief Executive 01926 468 300 Martin Clements, Finance Director 077696 54527 Chairman's Statement Business review Last year, we promised to continue to reduce costs and to target resources to maintain the Group's improving financial performance. This we have done. Despite continued tough trading conditions in our core UK life and pensions market, I am pleased to report that the Group has made excellent progress during the year. Pre-Tax Losses were significantly reduced to £0.38 million, down from £3.8 million last year. During the second half of the year, the Group reported an operating profit of £0.1 million and generated cash from trading for the first time. These are landmark events in the Group's development. Total sales revenues were down 18% to £5.4 million reflecting the changing mix of revenue in the business as sales of goal:technology licences and services continued to grow strongly, up 30%, and the completion of the major Point of Sale (POS) solution developed for Norwich Union resulted in an anticipated revenue decline. The business has matured during the year and given our recent success in entering new market sectors, we look to the future with optimism. The Group has continued to expand its market share in the UK life and pensions market. With the sale of e-business system components to Clerical Medical, part of the HBOS Group, and of a Multi-Channel Advice ("MCA") solution to another leading life and pensions provider during the period, all of the top ten UK life and pensions companies now use MCA solutions components based on goal: technology. Whilst the majority of turnover came from our existing customer base, new customers during the year also included Winterthur Life UK and Webline in the life and pensions market, Network Data and Kensington Mortgages, part of Kensington Group Plc, in the mortgage market, and a leading high street bank. Our market leading MCA solutions are widely recognised, having won the 'Best use of IT in insurance' category at the Financial Sector Technology Awards for the past two years, last year for Norwich Union's RIO project and this year for Zurich's ETi project. During the year, Milliman USA Inc, a leading North American actuarial services business acquired the business and liabilities of Focus Solutions Inc, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Focus Solutions Holdings Inc ("FSHI") in which Focus had retained a 49% investment since the disposal of 51% of the issued share capital of FSHI to management last year. As part of the acquisition agreement, Milliman signed a new licence agreement with the Group, ensuring that Focus will benefit from any future revenue based on the use of goal:technology through royalty payments. Initial progress is encouraging, although this is unlikely to result in substantial revenues in the short term. In February 2004, we launched XFormation, the world's first commercially available XForms Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the creation of web solutions. Incorporating technology supplied by x.port.net Limited, XFormation is a generic XForms based toolkit, supporting the next generation of forms technology that is set to replace HTML forms. XFormation has global application across all industry sectors. During the year, we secured our first orders for MCA solutions for the UK mortgage market, with Network Data and Kensington Mortgages. While not significant in terms of value, these contracts are very significant for the business, particularly the provision of an online mortgage application system to Kensington to enable brokers and intermediaries to transact electronic new mortgage business directly via the Internet. Review of results Turnover for the year ending 31st March 2004 was £5.4 million compared with £6.6 million in the previous financial year. This reduction was principally the result of the completion of the Norwich Union Point of Sale solution, RIO. In contrast, sales of goal:technology and associated services increased by 30% from £2.81 million to £3.67 million and now represent 66% of turnover, compared with 43% last year. Despite the decline in sales revenues, we reduced our loss before tax to £0.38 million compared to £3.8 million last year. In the second half of the year, the business generated a profit of £0.28 million. This is the first six month period in the Group's history in which we have generated a profit. The progress made towards profitability in the year, was largely achieved by reducing administrative expenses from £9.60 million last year to £5.98 million this year. Cost reductions achieved in the first half of the year fed through into a much improved performance in the second half. The monthly administrative costs of the business have been reduced to £0.42 million in the second half of the year, equivalent to annualised costs of £5.03 million. Substantial savings were made at an executive level, in administrative areas and in professional service delivery, particularly in relation to the RIO project. However, we maintained our investment in research and development, sales and marketing and in our partnerships team, as it is these areas that will develop and grow the business in the future. Investment in these areas will continue at similar levels in FY2005, while we maintain stringent control over all areas of expenditure. Losses after tax were £0.28 million against £3.43 million last year, after a corporation tax credit of £0.1 million against the costs of investment in research and development for the year ending March 2003. Cash outflow from operating activities during the year totalled £0.9 million (FY2003: £2.4 million). During the year, a total of £0.7 million was raised from share placings or the exercise of share options. In the second half of the period, the Group generated £0.2 million of cash from its trading activities. This is the first period in the Group's history when it has achieved this. Cash and money market deposits at 31st March 2004 were £1.5 million, compared with £1.3 million at 30th September 2003 and £1.7 million at the end of the last financial year, and the balance sheet remains debt free. During the year, we did, however, negotiate bank facilities totalling £350,000 with HSBC plc, should we require them. Loss per share for the year ending 31st March 2004 was 1.0p, compared with a loss of 13.4p for the year ending 31st March 2003. The Board's primary objective is to provide the resources necessary for the business to grow and create a business of sustained profitability and cash generation. In the long term, this represents the best opportunity for return on investment. Accordingly, we currently have no plans to pay a dividend in the near future. Research and development The investment in research and development and in product development is substantial and totalled £0.9 million in FY2004 (FY2003: £1.0 million). This investment is fully written off in the year in which it is incurred. The Group benefits from the research and development tax credits and has made a provision in the accounts for the credit due for FY2003. No provision has yet been made for FY2004, pending agreement of the FY2003 submission. People The Group has achieved much since flotation on AIM in March 2000. We now face different challenges and during the year a number of changes to the Board were made to help take the Group forward to its next phase in its development. Martin Clements was appointed to the Board as Finance Director on June 12th 2003 when Sue Hele stepped down as Finance Director. As Focus enters the next phase of its development, the Group will benefit from Martin's experience in developing high profile software companies both in the UK and internationally. I would like to extend my thanks to Sue for her commitment and contribution to the Group during the previous two and half years. Bob Hull retired as a non-executive director and Company Secretary on 25th September 2003 after nearly five years involvement with the Group, including acting as Finance Director at the time of the AIM flotation. We remain extremely grateful to Bob for his efforts at the time of the float and for his continued wise counsel since that event. I would like to wish him all the best in his future endeavours. The improved financial performance of the Group is a testament to the reputation of our staff for both their technical expertise and responsiveness to customer requirements. To achieve these results in the current environment has required both flexibility and commitment from our staff. These challenging times have created many pressures, in spite of which our team has continued to exceed our expectations time after time. I thank all of them for their continued commitment to Focus and for their achievements and enthusiasm. Outlook Whilst the whole financial services market remains volatile, insurance companies and others in the financial services industry are moving steadily towards electronic trading. Over the next year, a number of significant changes in regulation are likely to accelerate this. However, customers are still reviewing expenditure carefully. Consequently, we will continue to contain costs and target resources to maintain the Group's improving financial performance in this challenging environment. The Group will continue to move towards delivering value for shareholders by strengthening its position as the leading provider of electronic trading solutions to the life and pensions industry and exploiting the opportunities emerging in the mortgage market. We will continue working to fully exploit the potential of our MCA solutions based on goal:technology, supporting our new product, XFormation, and developing partnerships to help us penetrate other market sectors and regions. Alastair M Taylor Chairman Chief Executive's Statement Last year was a difficult year in the UK insurance market. Against this backdrop, Focus was also managing a major transition in its business as the Norwich Union POS solution, RIO, was coming to the end of its development cycle in terms of revenue generation. In this tough environment, Focus delivered a very encouraging performance, with 30% growth in sales of goal:technology and associated services, the successful launch of XFormation and the signing of the first partnership deal with Milliman. Underpinning our plans for the Group has been the recognition that we must make the business sustainable and scalable. In terms of sustainability, it is our objective to extend the customer base by entering additional market sectors. A key medium term objective is for our recurring revenues to substantially cover our fixed cost base. While we remain someway from achieving this goal, substantial progress was made in the year. In the short term, our solutions business is close to sustainability based on our established strategy for the design, delivery and implementation of world class e-trading solutions based around our MCA components for the financial services markets, built using goal:technology, our XML toolkit. In terms of scalability we see the technology side of the business offering much greater short term opportunities. The exploitation of goal:technology in other markets through partners has formed a major plank of our strategy for a number of years. We have now secured our first partnership arrangement with Milliman and have an ongoing business relationship with Fidelity Information Services. We have also recently joined the BEA Partner programme. The development and launch of XFormation, derived from the goal:technology family of software, is moving the business into other non-financial services related markets. MCA solutions for the life and pensions market The past few years have been very difficult for the UK life and pensions industry, with falling stock markets, increasing regulation and consolidation in the industry. The move towards electronic trading, although slow to take off initially, is now gathering pace. A recent analysis of the percentage of transactions now being delivered electronically shows that 17% were automated in 2003, compared to 4% over 2002. (Source: Focus Quotient 2003). With all of the top 10 UK life and pensions companies using goal:technology, Focus is now a leading supplier of customer management solutions to this market, providing one of the key components required to make straight through processing of applications for pensions and insurance policies a reality. Software that incorporates goal:technology has now been distributed to approximately 40,000 users within the UK life insurers and the IFA community. This represents a significant foothold in our core market and provides an important reference for other markets inside and outside the financial services sector. During the past year, we have secured important new business with Winterthur Life UK, Webline, Clerical Medical and one other leading life and pensions provider. Marlborough Stirling's market leading IFA Portal business, The Exchange, has signed an agreement to use goal:technology in its Exweb Gold service. An established customer, Zurich, has radically transformed its direct sales force POS using MCA based on goal:technology, over 98% of its transactions from this channel are now received electronically. It has also signed a contract to use MCA for new business based on goal:technology in its extranet, allowing the IFA channel to place transactions online. Entry into the mortgage market During the last twelve months, MCA for mortgages was selected by Kensington Mortgages to build a new online mortgage application system and by Network Data, a leading mortgage sourcing company, to support the provision of mortgage products. Focus has previously worked with two major life insurers to develop solutions to capture and deliver mortgages and associated general insurance transactions electronically. With the proliferation of mortgage products and the introduction of legislation in October 2004 to regulate the provision of mortgage advice, mortgage lenders are looking for solutions to achieve the new compliance requirements. goal:technology goal:technology, Focus' XML based toolkit is designed to enable the rapid development of components to automate the sales process. It comprises a suite of products that enable the simple design, development and deployment of complex data capture processes that can be implemented as a standalone technology or integrated within existing products or solutions to significantly enhance data capture capability. An XML data capture built using goal:technology can be reused in multiple business channels and environments. As a result, solutions built using goal:technology are built to change and are to a large extent "future proofed". This compares to the traditional approach to building software, which has resulted in many legacy systems with long lead times for development, and software that is difficult and costly to change and maintain. With speed and flexibility becoming key differentiators of company performance, these old models no longer make commercial sense. Our customers are looking for solutions that enable them to gain competitive differentiation in their market and that are flexible enough to allow them to respond to continuing change in market conditions. They are looking for fast development and implementation timescales, solutions that are built in 90 days, are easy to change and can deliver a return on investment within the current budget year. goal:technology is unique in meeting these requirements and underpinning the delivery of solutions to customers facing tough trading environments. goal:technology is generic, and can be used in a wide range of industries where the simple creation of sophisticated front end applications is required. Our partnership programme has been set up to extend the reach of goal:technology into market sectors outside the life and pensions market, targeting software companies and systems integrators, where goal:technology can add value to their solutions and cut the costs of development and maintenance. Our US partner, Milliman, is making good progress with goal:technology and is now ready to deploy solutions for three large US general insurance companies. As standards continue to evolve, we have made an early move into the XForms market, which we see as an important development. XFormation has been developed as the first working XForms builder/ processor package and made available to the wider development community over the Internet. The XForms standard defines a dialect for the next generation of forms technology that is set to replace HTML forms. The new XForms standard has been developed by the W3C, the worldwide community responsible for the standards that support the World Wide Web. The XForms specification overcomes current limitations of HTML and reduces the need for extensive script when developing interactive web pages. The XForms standard is device independent and will allow complex functionality to be deployed across the web and on other deployment devices such as mobile phones or pocket PCs. This in itself represents a major market opportunity for other sectors to gain the advantages currently enjoyed by our UK life and pensions customers. Focus will continue investing to ensure that our goal:technology XML toolkit exploits the recent advances in data capture led by the W3C Internet standards authority. Strategy It is our strategy to create a sustainable and scalable business. The provision of customer management solutions to the UK life and pensions market using goal: technology can generate sustainable profits in the foreseeable future, coupled with taking goal:technology into other associated markets (such as general insurance and mortgages). To achieve further growth, the Board believes there is significant opportunity in exploiting goal:technology more widely through developing partnership agreements with organisations operating in different geographical and vertical markets. John Streets Chief Executive Consolidated Profit and Loss Account 31 March 2004 Year ended Year ended 31 March 2004 31 March 2003 Continuing Continuing Discontinued Total Operations Operations Operations £'000 £'000 £'000 £'000 Turnover 5,388 6,583 - 6,583 Operating loss before re- organisation costs and amortisation of goodwill (470) (1,358) (1,119) (2,477) Re-organisation costs (119) (64) (129) (193) Amortisation of goodwill - - (343) (343) ________ ________ ________ ______ Operating loss (589) (1,422) (1,591) (3,013) Loss on disposal of US operations 167 - (897) (897) ________ ________ ________ ______ Loss on ordinary activities before interest (422) (1,422) (2,488) (3,910) Net interest receivable 40 89 (12) 77 ________ ________ ________ ______ Loss on ordinary activities before taxation (382) (1,333) (2,500) (3,833) Taxation 100 401 - 401 ________ ________ ________ ______ Loss on ordinary activities after taxation and retained loss for the year (282) (932) (2,500) (3,432) ======= ======= ======= ====== Loss per ordinary share (1.0p) (13.4p) No separate statement of total recognised gains and losses has been presented as all such gains and losses have been dealt with in the profit and loss account. Group Balance Sheet 31 March 2004 2004 2003 £'000 £'000 Fixed assets Tangible assets 171 224 ________ ________ Current assets Debtors 1,845 1,704 Investments - money market deposits 250 656 Cash at bank and in hand 1,234 1,039 ________ ________ 3,329 3,399 ________ ________ Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year 1,331 1,848 ________ ________ Net current assets 1,998 1,551 ________ ________ Total assets less current liabilities 2,169 1,775 ________ ________ Net assets 2,169 1,775 ________ ________ Capital and reserves Called up share capital 2,851 2,567 Share premium 9,819 9,427 Merger reserve 220 220 Profit and loss account (10,721) (10,439) ________ ________ Shareholders' funds - equity interests 2,169 1,775 ________ ________ Consolidated Cash Flow Statement for the year ended 31 March 2004 Year ended Year ended 31 March 31 March 2004 2003 £'000 £'000 Net cash outflow from operating activities (927) ( 2,375) Returns on investments and servicing of finance 40 73 Taxation 56 345 Capital expenditure and financial investment (56) (159) Acquisitions and disposals - (802) ________ ________ Cash outflow before management of liquid resources and financing (887) (2,918) Management of liquid resources 406 3,174 Financing 676 3 ________ ________ Increase in cash in the year 195 259 ________ ________ Reconciliation of net cashflow to movement in net funds Year ended Year ended 31 March 31 March 2004 2003 £'000 £'000 Increase in cash in the period 195 259 Change in net funds resulting from financing - 3 Cash inflow from decrease in liquid resources (406) (3,174) ________ ________ Movement in net funds in the year (211) (2,912) Net funds at start of year 1,695 4,607 ________ ________ Net funds at end of year 1,484 1,695 ________ ________ Notes for the year ended 31 March 2004 1. The financial information set out above does not constitute statutory accounts for the years ended 31 March 2004 and 2003, but is derived from those accounts. Statutory accounts for the year ended 31 March 2003 have been delivered to the Registrar of Companies and those for the year ended 31 March 2004 will be delivered following the Company's annual general meeting. The auditors have reported on those accounts; their reports were unqualified and did not contain statements under s237(2) or (3) Companies Act 1985. 2. Turnover The geographical analysis of turnover by destination is: 2004 2003 £000 £000 United Kingdom 5,367 6,583 North America 21 - ______ ______ 5,388 6,583 ______ ______ 3. Earnings/(loss) per share The basic earnings/(loss) per share is based on attributable loss for the year of £282,000 (2003 loss - £3,432,000) and on 27,503,678 ordinary shares (2003 - 25,627,844) being the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue during the year. The diluted loss per share in 2004 and 2003 is the same as the basic loss per share. 4. Report and Accounts Copies of the Report and Accounts will be circulated to shareholders shortly and may be obtained after the posting date from the Company Secretary, Focus Solutions Group Plc, Cranford House, Kenilworth Road, Leamington Spa, CV32 6RQ. 5. The AGM will be held at 4.30 pm on 22 July 2004 at the registered office of the Company (Cranford House, Kenilworth Road, Leamington Spa, CV32 6RQ). This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange ND FR UUUAUQUPCGBM
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