Acquisition

RNS Number : 0996S

IDOX PLC

15 November 2011

 



15 November 2011

IDOX plc

Acquisition of engineering and construction document management and control business for £11.6m

IDOX plc (AIM: IDOX, 'IDOX', 'the Group'), a leading supplier of document management and software solutions to the UK public sector and global asset-intensive industries, has acquired CTSpace, an engineering and construction sector document management and control business, for £11.6m in cash from Sword Group.  

CTSpace provides document management and collaboration workflow applications for the global construction and engineering industry and will complement the McLaren Software business that IDOX acquired in December 2010.

CTSpace, which is headquartered in London, had revenues of £12.7m (approximately half of these were generated in Europe and half in North America), which generated EBITDA of £1.7m and pre-tax profit of £1.3m for the year ended 31 December 2010 when CTSpace had net assets of £4.1m. The business had cash at completion of £0.5m.  IDOX will fund the acquisition entirely from a new term and revolving credit facility through its existing relationship with Lloyds Banking Group.

CTSpace provides both Software as a Service ('SaaS') and on-premise enterprise solutions, the latter of which leverage an organization's existing investment in leading enterprise content management ('ECM') platforms such as IBM FileNet®, EMC Documentum® or Microsoft SharePoint®.  When deployed with leading enterprise content management platforms, CTSpace's products provide an integrated, best practice environment that supports a project's entire lifecycle.

With the existing resources of McLaren Software and the Group's integrated software development resource, the addition of CTSpace brings further scale, efficiencies and enhanced product and development capabilities.

The IDOX Board expect the acquisition to be earnings enhancing in its first year.

Separately the Group has also published a trading update for the year to 31 October 2011.

Richard Kellett-Clarke, IDOX CEO, said:

"With CTSpace, and the prior acquisition of McLaren Software, we are well on our way to building a global engineering document management and control operation. We are confident that this business will match the scale and performance of our UK local authority business, which continues to grow.

"CTSpace brings additional capabilities to our core technology skills of document management and control systems, including fully developed and operational SaaS solutions and development facilities in India and Belarus.

"This earnings enhancing acquisition will benefit the enlarged Group, across all its areas of operation - supplying local government and international highly regulated asset-intensive industries."

IDOX has also released a trading update this morning for the year ended 31 October 2011.

There will be an analyst conference call at 8.15am - please contact Lucy Moseley at [e-mail] or by telephone on 020 7457 2020 for details.

Enquiries:

IDOX plc	[phone]
Martin Brooks, Chairman
Richard Kellett-Clarke, Chief Executive
William Edmondson, Chief Financial Officer
Investec Investment Banking (Nomad)	[phone]
Andrew Pinder
Patrick Robb Dominic Emery
Cara Griffiths
finnCap	[phone]
Charles Cunningham (Corporate Finance)
Stephen Norcross (Corporate Broking)
College Hill	[phone]
Adrian Duffield / Kay Larsen

About IDOX plc

IDOX plc is a supplier of software solutions and services to the UK public sector and increasingly to highly regulated asset intensive industries around the world in the wider corporate sector.

It is the leading applications provider to local government for core functions relating to land, people and property, such as its market leading planning systems and election management software. Over 90% of UK local authorities are now customers.

The Group provides public sector organisations with tools to manage information and knowledge, documents and content, business processes and workflow as well as connecting directly with the citizen via the web.

These capabilities were extended via the acquisition of McLaren Software in 2010 into the related area of engineering document management and control applications, serving many leading international companies in industries such as oil & gas, mining, utilities, pharmaceuticals and transportation.

IDOX also supplies decision support content and additional specialist services via the IDOX Information Solutions business, as well as transforming approaches to knowledge and content management via consultancy and training in the UK and internationally.

In addition, it provides these specialist skills to customers through its TFPL branded recruitment division

About CTSpace

CTSpace provides document control, cost management and business process automation solutions to companies with projects to design, engineer, construct and maintain capital assets in any location in the world. More than 145,000 professionals on 13,000 projects in 56 countries benefit through improved collaboration, enhanced ability to manage schedules and risks, and improved regulatory compliance. CTSpace is unique in offering both online 'software as a service' (SaaS) solutions (FusionLive) and on-premise enterprise solutions (FusionEnterprise). The latter leverages an organisation's existing investment in leading ECM platforms such as IBM FileNet®, EMC Documentum® or Microsoft SharePoint®.

Currently headquartered in Brentford, London with key operations in the US and France and with software development teams based in Russia and India, it was owned by Sword Group (NYSE Euronext: FR0004180578 SWP) since 2007.

 

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