A Scottish cloud services firm has posted a 44 per cent rise in underlying profit before tax.

Beeks Financial Cloud Group, which provides computing and connectivity services to financial markets, also posted a 35% rise in revenue in its six-month results to December 31, 2022, to £10.4 million, against £7.72m.

It pointed to a “considerable runway of visible revenue” ahead in the update.

It told the City the underlying profit before tax hit £650,000, set against £450,000 for the same time the previous year, with underlying earnings per share at 1.35p, against 0.9p in the first half of its last financial year.

The statutory equivalents showed a loss of £760,000, widening from £270,000 last year, with EPS at 73p against 42p.

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The firm pointed to more contracts and more jobs during the period, and a raft of new projects moving forward.

It said it is in final contractual negotiations with two further clients, with a “record pipeline” of new opportunities for its Exchange Cloud product.

It is also in talks with a number of major financial exchanges around the world where it hopes to provide its solutions.

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The Renfrewshire-based firm has increased its headcount to 106, up from 89 as of June last year, to “support both the product roadmap and pipeline execution”. The firm said results for the year are due to be in line with market expectations.

The company added: “Although we are not immune to well-documented macroeconomic issues such as inflationary pressure and supply chain disruption, we continue to manage the situation well.”

Gordon McArthur, chief executive of Beeks, said its pipeline offers "considerable opportunity".

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“Our principal focus for the second half will be to convert our substantial pipeline of opportunities across the newly launched Exchange Cloud offering,” he said.

"While the macro environment presents challenges to all businesses, we believe the shift of the financial services sector to cloud computing will continue at pace.

"Our pipeline of business with both existing and potential new customers provides us with a considerable runway of visible revenue and our balance sheet strength has enabled us to continue to make substantial investment into product, people and stock capacity to capitalise on this pipeline and considerable market opportunity."

Mr McArthur also said: “Since our IPO [initial public offering] in 2018, we have been focused on extending our offering to meet the needs of the world's largest financial services organisations, investing in our product set and team.”

Shares in Beeks Financial Cloud closed down 0.5p, or 0.35%, at 142p.