Scotland’s Amor Group is celebrating a fourth consecutive year of strong growth. The self-styled ‘international business technology company’ saw revenues increase by 32% in FY11 to £45m and staff levels grow by 25% to 569. Profitability was also on the up with EBITDA climbing from £5.8m to £6.6m and pre-tax profits increasing from £4.7m in FY10 to £5m last year. Despite a number of recent small acquisitions - most recently of healthcare SME Invisys (see UKHotViews archive) - the majority of Amor’s growth in FY11 was organic. The company reports an increase in recurring business with current customers, a rise in international business and several high profile contract wins, including the £18.5m/4-year deal to supply the eProcurement Scotland Service.
Key metrics support the picture of a strong performance across the business. Recurring revenue increased to 51% of the total from 39% last year; exports were up c150% on the previous year to £6m; and the amount of software product revenue doubled to 25% of total turnover, c£11m. These are trends that the management team sees continuing. Indeed, export revenues are forecast to reach £11m this year; and the goal is to have over 40% of revenue derived from software sales rather than services by 2014.
All three of Amor’s vertically-structured business units performed well. Revenue from ‘Transport’ (currently focused on airports) roughly doubled, as did the UK-focused ‘Public Services’ division. ‘Energy’ delivered more modest growth but still delivered a decent performance given recent changes in its target market (it’s now targeting large oil service companies with data centre and hosted services). The outlook for the coming year is also encouraging – over half the Group’s revenue for 2012 is already contracted and the company is on track to achieve £55m turnover through organic growth.
However, when we spoke to CEO John Innes and CFO David Blyth about the results earlier they confirmed they’re still on the lookout for acquisitions to help them to their ambitious, but not unachievable, target of £100m turnover by 2014. Top of their wish-list would be a ‘significant’ acquisition that brought with it a product or domain expertise to round out Amor’s Energy or Public Services offerings.