So what’s the latest headache for the new breed of 'chief information security officer' - now common in the US and coming to your organisation soon? The answer is loss of company information on personal devices such as smart phones, laptops and tablets. Using them makes it much easier to contact employees, but encrypting company information on these devices can be a headache. On the other hand solving this problem and developing, for example, mobile phones as access cards is why Intercede now has such an impressive list of blue-chip clients and partners.
The company's latest results show a big fall in profits, but that largely covers the cost of employing more highly paid security-orientated staff as employee numbers rose from 56 to 67in the past 12 months which in turn sent administration expenses up 23 per cent to £2.82m. And the preceding year included a one-off (mainly licence income) deal worth over £1m with Boeing. Both Boeing and Lockheed Martin are direct customers but, increasingly, income is coming from partnership deals with the likes of Hewlett Packard and Microsoft.
For the full year broker FinnCap forecasts revenues up from £6.9m to £7.7m, but a 30 per cent fall in adjusted pre-tax profits to £1.4m to give EPS of 3p (2011: 4.1p). However, for the year to March 2013, the broker expects pre-tax profits to recover to £2.5m and EPS of 5.2p.
INTERCEDE (IGP) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ORD PRICE: | 60p | MARKET VALUE: | £29.0m | |
| TOUCH: | 58-62p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 83p | LOW: 51.5p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | nil | PE RATIO: | 20 | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 12p | NET CASH: | £6.56m | |
| Half-year to 30 Sept | Turnover (£m) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 3.51 | 1.23 | 2.50 | nil |
| 2011 | 3.53 | 0.65 | 1.40 | nil |
| % change | +1 | -47 | -44 | - |
Aim: Software | ||||
