Software pure play Microgen issued an in line trading update, and announced the promotion of COO David Sherriff to the role of CEO. Sherriff, who will report into chairman Martyn Ratcliffe, has certainly earned his spurs at Microgen as a long-time senior manager. He joined the company back in May 1999 as a divisional MD, moving from erstwhile ECsoft (now part of Ciber) where he was UK MD, and then made it onto the Microgen board in 2002. Peter Bertram, who is currently a non-executive director and chairman of the audit committee, is also being appointed as the senior independent non-executive director – something that should give further weight to Microgen’s strong focus on cash generation (see Microgen – you can’t argue with cash). In fact Microgen’s cash now stands at £27.5m as of 31 March (vs. £25.4m on 31 December), so the good news story continues.
Operationally, Microgen’s business process management platform division (Aptitude) is continuing to deliver strong growth (Aptitude revenue grew 44% last year), and the legacy financial systems software division continues to perform "satisfactorily" (it declined 3% last year). Consequently, management remains “cautious and prudent” about the rest of the year.