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It’s been almost exactly a year since AIM-listed recruitment software company Dillistone Group acquired Woodcote Software, the holding company for UK-based privately held recruitment software firm, Voyager Software (see Dillistone undertakes a bold voyage for growth), and it looks like the journey has so far been ‘steady as she goes’. This is quite a result given that Woodcote/Voyager was half Dillistone’s size by revenues, usually a recipe for a dose of ‘acquisition indigestion’.
The effect on Dillistone’s half-time results was pretty much predictable. Headline revenues grew by 58% to £3.6m, with underlying organic growth around 4%. Operating margins lost over 4 points to 19.3% mainly due to the dilutive effect of Woodcote/Voyager, whose (adjusted) operating margin is 11 points lower than Dillistone’s. Pre-tax profits grew by 27% to £700k, driving up EPS by 24% to 2,9p. Management is raising the interim dividend by 3% to 1.2p a share.
Dillistone is about to release a new version of the Voyager product based on the same technology platform as its core FileFinder system, though is not expecting to reap the benefits until the second half of 2013. If so, Dillistone (also chaired by SciSys chairman, Mike Love) will prove a worthy and notable exception to our ‘acquisition indigestion’ rule.
