Recent acquisitions helped Brady to a confident year end update. The trading, risk management and settlement software provider said EBITDA excluding exceptional costs for the year ended 31 December would be up 40% on 2011 at c£5.2m, and headline revenue would be up 47%. This will take Brady to c£28m in revenue for the year. Another piece of good news is that the bad debts which plagued Brady during the first half of the year (see Bad debt takes shine off Brady H1) appear to be behind it now.
Brady’s three acquisitions over the past year, of Navita, syseca (see here) and most recently US-based energy trading supplier SAI in November (see here), all helped boost the top line performance. We look forward to hearing what the underlying picture is at the full results.
Of real interest is the admission that Brady has seen a slower shift from traditional licences to the rental (SaaS) model than initially anticipated. It is clear from the contract wins that this has been down to customer demand.
Brady said it won 20 ‘substantial’ new licence contracts in the year, with twelve of these in the second half. The value of the average licence deal increased c75% in the year, and recurring revenues jumped 48%. Despite this seeming proof that that the licence model isn’t dead, Brady said it intends to accelerate the pace of transition to the rental model during 2013. Surely Brady would do best to follow customer demand.