A SCOTTISH fintech firm has hailed a hike in revenues and two major contract extensions.
Beeks Financial Cloud, which provides systems that customers can use to speed up online trading in financial products, flagged “strong progress” as it released its interim results.
The Glasgow-based firm, which also operates data centres close to leading exchanges, said that “following successful initial deployments” two high-level customers have now committed to the Beeks private cloud infrastructure, with a number of top-tier client proof of concept projects also secured.
It said: “Beeks has now completed the successful full deployment of the first stage of an annualised $1 million global private cloud solution for a global financial markets technology provider.
“While having experienced some delays due to Covid-related restrictions, the contract reached 90 per cent of its anticipated revenue run-rate by February 2021.
“Following this successful first stage, the customer has committed to extending the private cloud solution to further geographies, with the contract expected to reach $2.1m of annualised revenue, with a significant proportion of this expected to be delivered by the end of this financial year.”
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It said significant further expansion of the contract is expected over the next one to two years, with additional opportunities, both directly and indirectly, also being identified.
One of the company’s other top-level customers, an open banking provider, has also expanded its contract, initially worth £1.1m over three years, to 135% of the original commitment, again with further expansion opportunities ahead.
It comes as the group reported in its unaudited results for the six months ended December 31, 2020 that revenues increased by 24% to £5.29m, against £4.28m for the same time last year.
It said underlying gross profit was up 18% to £2.59m against £2.19m. Underlying profit before tax was down 8% to £550,000, against £600,000 after increased investment into the business, with an unchanged proposed interim dividend of 20p.
It said operational highlights included increased investment into “people, operations and product offering, to capitalise on the growing financial service private cloud opportunity”.
READ MORE: Glasgow fintech hails growth in sales pipeline
It also hailed the launch of Beeks Analytics, a cloud-based SaaS analytics offering following the acquisition of Velocimetrics, the UK-based monitoring and trade analytics software company, in April last year.
It said there are solid sales in the pipeline and it is continuing to see an increase in the number of financial services organisations seeking cloud infrastructure. There has been an increase in new business sales in recent months and trading for the current financial year is positive and remains in line with the range of market expectations, it added.
It said it expects revenue and margins to benefit in the second half of the year “and beyond” from growth in existing and new customers.
Gordon McArthur, Beeks’ chief executive, said: “Current trading is positive and we have entered the second half of the year with a solid pipeline of opportunities, supported by a significantly expanded business, increased customer base, broadened product offering and continued growth of our existing Tier 1 accounts.
"We have seen increased demand for our offering during the second half of the year to date, giving us confidence in our ability to service a wide range of financial services organisations across different geographies.
"Whilst we continue to assess the ongoing impact of Covid-19 on our business and operations, we are confident that Beeks is poised for considerable growth within a rapidly developing market.”
Shares in Aim-listed Beeks closed down 2p, or 1.77%, at 111p.
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