There is a growing divide between Fidessa’s large and smaller customer base with the former continuing to invest while the latter are scaling back or closing down their equities businesses, particularly in Europe and the US. That makes for a challenging environment for trading and investment management software provider Fidessa, increasing its reliance on existing customers for revenue opportunities.
Existing customers cannot be assumed to be secure though – there are reports that Fidessa customer MF Global is in difficulties – so although this strategy is necessary it is more of a stopgap. It is working at the moment because the company says it has experienced good growth over the four months to date. Even if MF Global does close down Fidessa does not expect it will significantly impact its business and anticipates its growth rate for the full year being similar to the first half, which came in at 7% (see Fidessa grows despite ‘challenging conditions’). However, H1 2011 was down on the previous year so the trend looks like it is static to downwards.