It looks like it’s been a good year for Lombard Risk, the provider of integrated collateral management and regulatory reporting solutions. After a good first half with revenues up 41% and order book ahead by 35%, the company’s management now expect revenues of between £34m and £34.4m for the year to March 2017, an increase of around 40% on the previous year. EBITDA is also forecast to be up strongly, to £2.4-£2.8m, this figure also being ahead of market expectations.
The new management team have made substantial progress over the past year or so (see Mr. Brown goes off to town…) and their hard work can be seen in these figures. The business had a big clear-out in the first half last year and has focused on two major products in collateral management and regulatory reporting. The market background is also very positive as these are both important areas where investment companies are looking to modernise their systems to cope with ever-increasing oversight and tighter margins. New cloud-based variants of the solutions have opened up a new raft of potential customers and more partnerships (with Oracle and Atos) and a push in the US has broadened and strengthened the customer base.
The result of this progress is a much more robust and predictable business that is unlikely to suffer from the regulatory delays and contract postponements that had stalled progress in 2013 and early 2015 (see Regulator and contracts trip up LRM, again). Cash balances stand at £7m, after an £8m placing in June and the company looks set fair for another year of profitable progress. We’ll learn more about this transformation when the full results are published on 24th May.